A Memoir of Motherhood, Miracles, and a Whole Lot of Mail
November 25, 2013
Chronicling a few of the critical moments of her life, Clarke, a journalist and the host of the Black Business Report, wrote this sensitive memoir of identity and self-discovery, as an adopted person seeking to find her birth mother after a list of health woes forced her to uncover her genetic heritage despite the wall of adoption agency secrecy. Currently married to the son of a prominent businessman, she investigates her origins following the revelation that she was adopted almost 30 years earlier. The clues come fast and furious, until the final realization that she is the daughter of Carole “Cookie” Cole, the oldest daughter of the legendary Nat King Cole. The book reaches an emotional peak when Clarke calls her birth mother for the first time, laying the foundation of a tightly knit relationship that would develop over the course of many postcards, letters, and e-mails. Like an onion being peeled, Cookie and Clarke trade secrets, insecurities, trials and triumphs throughout this splendid, soul-baring memoir, aware of the past but building toward a future together.
November 1, 2013
Journalist Clarke went looking for her biological mother and found Cookie, eldest daughter of Nat King Cole, with whom she struck up a voluminous correspondence.
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 15, 2014
Journalist Clarke's story of her discovery that her biological mother was Carol "Cookie" Cole, the daughter of Nat King Cole, a revelation that caused her to build a life-altering relationship with her through the exchange of letters, phone calls and postcards. The author is an award-winning journalist and the happy mother of two. She is also the adopted daughter of two parents who gave her a wonderful life. When she visited the agency that handled her adoption, she only sought information on her genetic heritage, which she required for medical reasons. The details she received from the agency, however, as well as a series of remarkable coincidences, helped her realize that her birth mother was Cookie Cole, the daughter of the legendary musician. The author's discovery forced her to acknowledge a deep-rooted curiosity she had about her birth mother since childhood. "All adoptees are curious about their beginnings," she writes. "Anyone who claims otherwise (as I have many times) is lying." So she reached out to Cookie in search of answers to the questions she had convinced herself, up until that point, that she could ignore. Clarke's prose is elegant, crisp and deeply personal, and her narration is gripping, even after she reconnects with her biological mother and uncovers the truth about her own origins. Happy endings in life are seldom conclusions, and that Clarke gets one only complicated her story more. "Whose life is this anyway?" writes Cookie in one of her letters to her daughter, a fraught question coming from a woman who created life, only to have life force her to give her child away. Clarke effectively explores her crisis of identity by peeling back layer after layer of a complex, riveting personal history. A captivating memoir about a daughter's reunion with her birth mother and the intricate consequences it had on both their lives.
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Starred review from December 15, 2013
When Clarke visited Spence-Chapin Family Services, which handled her adoption, she was looking for information that could help answer questions about health concerns. She'd had a happy childhood as the adopted only child of educators, both of West Indian heritage with strong ties to their large families. But when the social worker offered her a thick file, Clarke found herself sifting through detail that suggested that she might actually know the family of her birth mother; in fact, a friend of hers could be a blood relative. Her investigation uncovered the stunning truth, that her mother was Carole Cookie Cole, adopted daughter of Nat King Cole, who gave birth to Clarke shortly after the singer's death. What followed was a flood of bicoastal phone calls, e-mails, letters, and postcards as Clarke, an editor at Black Enterprise, reached out to her birth mother in L.A. Respectful of Clarke's relationship with her adoptive parents but aching to close a gap of 37 years, the two women poured themselves into constant correspondence and struggled daily to restructure their lives, blend their families, and get past the family intrigues behind their separation. This is a loving, sometimes fractious account of the enduring power of family love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)