A DNA test ends up shaking artist and writer Kyo Maclear's world, calling into question much of the stories she knows about her parents.

Some months after her father's death, Kyo Maclear receives the results of a DNA test, which inform her that the man she thought was her father was not. It's shocking, difficult to process, and sends Maclear on a long search for answers.

Answers from her mother prove initially elusive, and it's not till Maclear uses gardening as a way to find common ground to talk with her about difficult things that she begins to get answers. Maclear also works with a Search Angel to finally locate half-siblings and an identity for her biological father. During this time, Maclear's mother also gets cancer, and Maclear must deal with all this brings up, while also processing all the changes to her understanding of who her mother is as she learns how and why her mother became involved with the man who became her biological father.

The writing is sensitive, heart wrenching, and meditative. Maclear gently unfolds her parents' complicated and difficult relationship, and how her mother's loneliness as a Japanese immigrant in London and desire to make art propelled her to make decisions that would ultimately affect her daughter.

It's also a quiet, highly observant memoir about search for answers, yearning for connection, the power of art, and nurturing a garden. It's lovely, and touching.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Penguin Random House Canada for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Sometimes a book feels like it was written purposefully and specifically for you, which feels odd to say about a memoir! This is a deeply personal and intimate story about Kyo Maclear's relationship with her parents after finding out, after his death, that her father isn't actually her biological father. In the following months of upheaval and confusion, Kyo finds comfort in gardening: an act which connects her with her mother, whose past becomes increasingly complicated with these secrets brought to light. The way Kyo articulates her unique and singular experience with universal themes of lineage, truth, storytelling, and forgiveness was so moving. But what really spoke to me was how Kyo Maclear writes about the experience of being half-Japanese. Despite not being fluent in Japanese and feeling the rift this places between her and her mother, despite not growing up in Japan and not being viewed as 'Japanese' enough by other people, she still takes pride and ownership in her culture: it's interlaced throughout the book in each section title, in the romaji lines of text she places without translation, in textual references, and even in the delicacy and lyricism of her writing. I loved everything about this. It wasn't a story that tore your heart and made you want to sob your eyes out, but a series of observations, strung together, with a voice both gentle and mature that guided you to see Kyo's experiences through her eyes, and understand what they taught her, and us, about what it means to be an interconnected, living, rooted being on this earth.