Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir - Hardcover

Cistaro, Melissa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1492615382 ISBN 13: 9781492615385

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc, 2015

Synopsis

"A story that lingers in the heart long after the last page is turned." --HOPE EDELMAN, bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and The Possibility of EverythingThis 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?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 Mother chronicles 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.

About this title

Review:

"This is an astonishing book, full of heartbreak and love and hard-won wisdom. Melissa Cistaro writes beautifully not just about her search for the mother who abandoned her, but about the myriad ways parents and children don't and do connect. Told in vivid scenes and through the texts of letters her mother never sent, Cistaro chronicles a journey that goes way past forgiveness to true understanding." - Will Schwalbe, bestselling author of The End Of Your Life Book Club

"Sometimes we are defined as much by the person who is missing as the person who is there. Melissa Cistaro has a story to tell and one you don't hear every day. I was deeply moved from word one." - Kelly Corrigan, bestselling memoirist of The Middle Place, Lift, and Glitter & Glue

"Melissa Cistaro's imagery is startling and vivid, her story brutally honest and devoid of judgment. Pieces of My Mother is a story that lingers in the heart long after the last page is turned." - Hope Edelman, bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and The Possibility of Everything

"Full of hope, regret and lessons learned, Pieces of My Mother is a unique and compelling look at how profoundly mothers affect our lives. Whether absent or hauntingly close, longing for a mother can force a child into maturity beyond her years, and garner her with a lifetime of longing. This book is as lyrical as it is honest, as humorous as it is heartbreaking." - Monica Holloway, bestselling author of Cowboy & Wills and Driving with Dead People

"Heartbreaking in its simplicity, Pieces of My Mother is Melissa Cistaro's attempt to shed some much needed light on her dark past...a tentative, poignant, painful exploration that welcomes complexity, forgiveness, and empathy. " - Sahar's Reviews

"Weeks after I read the last gorgeous page of Pieces of My Mother, I still find myself thinking about Melissa Cistaro and her complex, maddening and fascinating mother. What caused this woman to walk out of her house one afternoon, leaving the children she loved behind? As Melissa puts the pieces together we are treated to an outstanding memoir written with tenderness, wit and depth. " - Elaine Petrocelli, Book Passage, San Francisco, CA

"An honest and affecting story of the many complexities involved with family relationships." - Kirkus

"At three, Cistaro watched her mother sob in the driver's seat of her car through the window in her bedroom. Minutes later, her mother drove off, removing herself from the traditional role.

Thirty six years later, Cistaro leaves her family on Christmas Day to sit by her mother's bedside as she succumbs to cirrhosis. Challenged to piece together a woman she barely knows, Cistaro takes the reader into her world, her story. Weaving between Now and Then, Cistaro tells of life with and without her mother. And without her." - April Gosling, Boulder Bookstore (Boulder, CO)

"Filled with moments of poignancy and grace, Melissa Cistaro's beautiful book lands on a gorgeous note of redemption. I loved it." - Lolly Winston, bestselling author of Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately

"Pieces of My Mother is part memoir, part detective story, and throughout its pages riveting to read... A brave and impressive debut." - Tom Barbash, critically acclaimed author of Stay Up With Me and the New York Times bestseller On Top of the World

About the Author:

Melissa Cistaro is a bookseller and the events coordinator at Book Passage, the legendary San Francisco Bay Area independent bookstore, where she has hosted more than 200 authors. A writer and mother of two, she has been interviewed on a number of radio shows and has been published in numerous literary journals including the New Ohio Review, Anderbo.com, and Brevity as well as in two anthologies alongside Anne Lamott, Jane Smiley, and other writers. Melissa graduated with honors from UCLA and continued her education with the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She has participated in the Tin House Writer's Workshop in Portland and The Writer's Studio in Los Angeles. She lives in San Francisco.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1492615382
• ISBN 13: 9781492615385
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320