In Search of Us

Gr 9 Up—A coming-of-age novel about all kinds of love, this is a realistic look into how teens' lives intertwine with their parents' pasts. The initial time line begins with Angie, a 17-year-old daughter of a single mother, leaving home to find answers about her past. Angie is searching for the truth about her father and his family, whom she never knew. The second narrative follows Marilyn, Angie's mother at 17. Marilyn is working through obstacles in her life that center around her unhinged family life and newfound love, James. Dellaira uses the two parallel threads to explore what it would be like for a young woman to know her mother's story and realize how it is also her own. Readers will be drawn into Marilyn's tale and keep wondering until the very end how Angie fits in. Some sexual situations are present but are not explicit. Readers who enjoyed Dellaira's Love Letters to the Dead or Emery Lord's When We Collided will fall in love with this title.