Ava Dellaira's In Search of Us is a sweeping multi-generational love story.
To seventeen-year-old Angie, who is mixed-race, Marilyn is her hardworking, devoted white single mother. But Marilyn was once young, too.
When Marilyn was seventeen, she fell in love with Angie's father, James, who was African-American. But Angie's never met him, and Marilyn has always told her he died before she was born. When Angie discovers evidence of an uncle she's never met she starts to wonder: What if her dad is still alive, too?
So she sets off on a journey to find him, hitching a ride to LA from her home in New Mexico with her ex-boyfriend, Sam. Along the way, she uncovers some hard truths about herself, her mother, and what truly happened to her father.
"A rare and special book. Part mother-daughter love story, part road trip journey, part compelling mystery, and one hundred percent beautiful, spellbinding tearjerker. I’m in love with every page." ―Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places and Holding Up the Universe
"A masterful work of fiction. Exploring race and mother and daughter relationships, this novel is also one of the most tender and authentic takes on first love that I have ever read." ―Jennifer Mathieu, author of Moxie
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Dellaira breathes her characters into vivid life, Marilyn with her yearning and her loneliness, James with his dreams. The story of their romance, their discovery of each other is beautifully told. The parallel stories of Marilyn and James and Angie and Sam are skillfully woven together, the suspense building as Angie moves toward uncovering the secret Marilyn has kept all these years. The heart-rending tragedy at the center of the novel is revealed only toward the end - a life-changing moment frozen in amber, with a haunting and terrible resonance for readers in the year 2018.
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The Buffalo News