Cover of Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir

Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir

This provocative, poignant memoir of a daughter whose mother left her behind by choice begs the question: Are we destined to make the same mistakes as our parents?

Read more

One summer, Melissa Cistaro's mother drove off without explanation Devastated, Melissa and her brothers were left to pick up the pieces, always tormented by the thought: Why did their mother abandon them?

Thirty-five years later, with children of her own, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. After decades of hiding her painful memories, she has just days to find out what happened that summer and confront the fear she could do the same to her kids. But Melissa never expects to stumble across a cache of letters her mother wrote to her but never sent, which could hold the answers she seeks.

Haunting yet ultimately uplifting, Pieces of My Motherchronicles one woman's quest to discover what drives a mother to walk away from the children she loves. Alternating between Melissa's tumultuous coming-of-age and her mother's final days, this captivating memoir reveals how our parents' choices impact our own and how we can survive those to forge our own paths.

Subject
biographymemoir
Themes
relationships
Setting
USA
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 320 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. About My Sisters Shares memoir, nonfiction, biography
  2. With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson Shares memoir, nonfiction, biography
  3. Will & I: A Memoir Shares memoir, nonfiction, biography
  4. 8: a Memoir Shares memoir, nonfiction, biography

“People who read Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir tend to reach for these next.”

  1. I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir
  2. Boy Meets Depression: Or Life Sucks and Then You Live
  3. Stepdog
  4. My Husband, My Friend: A Memoir

“If you want more of the same (biography about relationships), start with these.”

  1. Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal
  2. Unlikely Brothers
  3. Chanel Bonfire
  4. Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir

“If it was the memoir that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir
  2. A Year and Six Seconds: A Memoir of Stumbling from Heartbreak to Happiness
  3. The Liars' Club
  4. It Takes a Worried Man

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Come Find Me
  2. The Grown Ups
  3. Christmas at The Little Knitting Box
  4. Careless