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“What a beautiful, immersive book… Clark-Flory deftly peels back
layer after layer of her own family’s story, laying bare much about this
country’s history, as well as its relationship to sex, shame, women, race, and the
durability of love itself. I cried!”

—Rebecca Traister, *New York Times* bestselling author of *Good and Mad*

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“Deeply researched, lyrically written… trenchant and moving… a powerful rejection of white-male dominated systems of oppression.”

— Kirkus (starred review)

“A stirring family history... reckoning with race, power, privilege, and women's roles.”

— Booklist (starred review)

“Vivid, brave, and full of grace… a deft, inspired examination of the love and mysteries between moms and their children. … It is delicate and sacred—and as solid as a rock. It is also full of humor and sweetness. I will tell every mother and daughter I know to read this luminous, resonant bell of a book.”

—Savala Nolan, author of Good Woman

“Tracy Clark-Flory connects the dots between her own life, the reader’s, and the larger culture, turning the family story of a pregnant girl caught by the social forces of her time—around gender, race, class—into the story of all women: who we are as daughters, how we carry the relationships to our mothers long after they are gone, and how we are shaped, generationally, by the limits on our personal, sexual, and reproductive freedom.”

—Peggy Orenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex

From the author of the memoir Want Me: A Sex Writer’s Journey into the Heart of Desire (an NPR Best Book of the Year) comes a story of family secrets, sisterhood, and the importance of untangling all that we inherit from our mothers.

Tracy Clark-Flory knew that she had a sister out there, somewhere. Her mom, Deb, had told her about being sent to a home for unwed mothers as a pregnant teenager in the Sixties. After placing her baby for adoption, Deb was committed to a mental institution in her grief. Decades later, she had Tracy, who grew up as an only child longing for her sister.

Now, in her thirties and a mother herself, Tracy took a DNA test in hopes of finding her — and she did.

Newly connected with her half-sister Kathy, both daughters started asking questions about the past that their mom, who had died years earlier, could no longer answer. Tracy, a longtime journalist, set out to make sense of what happened back in 1965.

She learned that their mom had been pulled into a racist and sexist system designed to turn “bad girls” into proper women and wives. Tracy realized that her own life had been profoundly shaped by her mom’s past, but she also uncovered a bigger story about patriarchal control, mother-daughter dynamics, and the way that shame keeps us divided within ourselves and from each other.

Along the way, Tracy started to repair her own inner fractures, and the two sisters came together in ways their mother never could have dreamed.

Blending powerful memoir with cultural criticism and razor-sharp reporting, My Mother’s Daughter is a moving, intimate tale of traumatic inheritance and intergenerational healing. This book is a daughter’s love letter to her mother and a rallying cry to reclaim those parts of ourselves, and our family stories, that are hidden away.

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“A powerful, searching, and honest reckoning with the complicated inheritance mothers pass to daughters. Through investigating her own family's very American story in all its pain and beauty, she interrogates the burdens of history while never losing sight of the individuals shaped by it. My Mother's Daughter is clear-eyed, moving, and true.”

— Irin Carmon, author of Unbearable and Notorious RBG

“A rich and deeply layered portrait of family and how we think about identity, memory, trauma, and love. This riveting story reveals how the past is never truly the past at all, but instead is constantly changing who we are with every uncovered truth and new conversation.”

—Soraya Chemaly, author of All We Want Is Everything

“A beautiful, complex narrative of how women have been held back and how we can change our futures. Reading this felt like sitting down with a dear friend, sorting through the sexual baggage we've been handed, and letting it go. This book is a myth-buster, a cycle-breaker, and it's also a page turner. I was so fully immersed, I could not put it down.”

—Lyz Lenz, New York Times bestselling author of This American Ex-Wife

“Multidimensional and intimate…My Mother’s Daughter deeply interrogates female sexual deviance across generational secrets and myths.”

— Koa Beck, author of White Feminism

“Moving, trenchant, and deeply humane, My Mother’s Daughter is the tour de force of a memoir you need to read this year. I laughed, I cried, and I was instantly pulled in by this beautiful story of family, gender, race, searching, and belonging.”

—Kate Manne, author of Down Girl and Unshrinking

“A searching, intimate, and powerful memoir about the bonds that shape us and the histories that hum beneath everyday life. My Mother’s Daughter moves with tenderness and moral clarity, asking how love, loss, and long-held secrets travel across generations. Tracy Clark-Flory has written a beautiful, haunting, and resonant book.”

—Chelsea Bieker, bestselling author of Madwoman and Godshot

“A tender, revelatory, and deeply moving look at how family is shaped in the shadows of patriarchal power. Tracy Clark-Flory probes her own history with curiosity and openness, expanding the possibilities of both grief and inheritance, even when they are touched by reproductive control. By unearthing her mother's story, Clark-Flory steps into the light and creates something altogether new. Defiant, transformative, and incredibly timely, this book will forever change how you understand motherhood, love, and the power of sisterhood.”