Belonging A daughter's search for identity through loss and love

When journalist Miller, co-host of CBS Saturday Morning, was born, her father was married to a woman who wasn't her mother. Her parents met at the hospital where they both worked, he as a surgeon and she as a nurse. Miller's Mexican-American mother never told her family that she was pregnant, and after giving birth, left the author with her Black father, who asked his own mother to raise the baby. Miller grew up surrounded by love and maternal figures, but always wondered about the mother who had left her. This memoir chronicles Miller's life as an inquisitive child growing up in Los Angeles. Her experiences with racism and colorism from a young age shaped her identity. After she graduated from Howard University, she determined to make a career in reporting and broadcast journalism. In her twenties, Miller learned her father had cancer, and he urged her to find her mother, if only to understand the other half of her medical history. Miller's recounting makes for a thoughtful meditation on family and identity.

CBS Saturday Morning host Miller chronicles the search for her estranged birth mother in her outstanding debut. When Miller was 24, her dying father--a Black trauma surgeon--urged her to find her white Chicana mom. As a child, Miller was raised by her grandmother and a handful of other women, and she longed for a connection to her biological mother: "Why is the light pigment of my skin or the too-loose texture of my hair, physical attributes not of my choosing, bestowed upon me at birth by a woman whose face I couldn't even conjure?" Later, she sought out half-siblings and other formerly unknown relatives to help piece together a picture of her own identity, ultimately finding her mother and uncovering the reason for her mother's departure. Miller poignantly weaves her story with key historical moments, including the Rodney King beating--she lived a few blocks away in Compton at the time--and the fact that her father was the first doctor to treat Bobby Kennedy after he was shot. Readers will be transfixed by Miller's thought-provoking queries about race and family, and inspired by her candor. The result is an elegantly structured soul-soother. Agent: Will Lippincott, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

The co-host of CBS Saturday Morning recounts the quest for her biological mother. Miller's father was a successful surgeon who, even in supposedly progressive Los Angeles, encountered a color line that prompted him to political activism. As the author writes, she was "the child of a clandestine affair," and her father was reticent to reveal to her the identity of her mother, who was clearly not Black. "If I wore my hair blow-dried straight," Miller writes, "people queried whether I was Italian, Jewish, or Hispanic, peppering me with questions about my heritage long before I had examined such questions for myself." Among the Southern relatives with whom she lived, her mixed-race status was acknowledged, if quietly. However, no details were forthcoming until her gravely ill father suggested that she find her mother to answer the questions he knew his daughter harbored. One, of course, is why her mother abandoned them. Enter the color line again and the manifold prejudices of the era. Those color lines were still in play, writes Miller, when a classmate and crush, shocked to find out that she was Black, shunned her afterward. Unlike many such memoirs, the author refuses to wallow in self-pity. Instead, she is determined to claim her heritage and honor it. Unfortunately, her mother continued to distance herself, at which point Miller resolved, "no longer would I accord her half of my identity, when she had given me nothing of hers." That view gained further nuance as Miller grew to middle age and deeper wisdom. Though the author prepared a special TV segment in the hope that her mother would finally "publicly acknowledge the Black child she had borne," she understands that it will likely remain unrealized in a time when the color line still holds strong. An affecting narrative that explores race and racism while addressing deeply personal questions. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.