The Mistress's Daughter: A Memoir

The "fierce and eloquent" (New York Times) memoir by the award-winning author of May We Be Forgiven and This Book Will Save Your Life

The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with a family of his own. The Mistress's Daughter is the ruthlessly honest account of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her. Homes relates how they initially made contact and what happened afterwards, and digs through the family history of both sets of her parents in a twenty-first-century electronic search for self. Daring, heartbreaking, and startlingly funny, Homes's memoir is a brave and profoundly moving consideration of identity and family.

"A compelling, devastating, and furiously good book written with an honesty few of us would risk." —Zadie Smith 

"I fell in love with it from the first page and read compulsively to the end." —Amy Tan