“A powerful story of family and connection that is just as fun as it is heartbreaking. I didn’t want the story to end.”
—  Jill Santopolo,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Light We Lost
and
Everything After
Following her acclaimed debut novel,
You and Me and Us,
Alison
Hammer offers a deeply moving story of family and identity. When a DNA test
reveals a long-buried secret, a woman must look to the past to understand her
mother and herself.
When
Paige Meyer gets an email from a DNA testing website announcing that her father
is a man she never met, she is convinced there must be a mistake. But as she
digs deeper into her mother’s past and her own feelings of being the odd child
out growing up, Paige begins to question everything she thought she knew. Could
this be why Paige never felt like she fit in her family, and why her mother
always seemed to keep her at an arm’s length? And what does it mean for Paige’s
memories of her father, a man she idolized and whose death she is still
grieving?
Back
in 1975, Betsy Kaplan, Paige’s mom, is a straightlaced sophomore at the
University of Kansas. When her sweet but boring boyfriend disappoints her,
Betsy decides she wants more out of life, and is tired of playing it safe.
Enter Andy Abrams, the golden boy on campus with a potentially devastating
secret. After their night together has unexpected consequences, Betsy is
determined to bury the truth and rebuild a stable life for her unborn child,
whatever the cost.
Paige can’t get answers from her mother, she goes looking for the only other
person who was there that night. The more she learns about what happened, the
more she sees her unflappable, distant mother as a real person faced with an
impossible choice. But will it be enough to mend their broken relationship?
Told
in dual timelines,
Little Pieces of Me
examines identity and how the way
we define ourselves changes (or not) through our life experiences.