Everyone is searching for something
Marilyn is searching for freedom. She grew up as a child actor her mother’s meal ticket out of mediocrity. But it’s been a long time since she booked a job, and without her contribution to their meager income, she and her mom have no choice but to move in with her volatile uncle. Marilyn is counting down the days until she can escape to college, and the promise of making her own future. That is, until she falls in love with James, the boy downstairs, who shows her that life is worth living in the present. At seventeen, Marilyn is about to learn that everything can change in an instant.
Angie is in search of answers. She is biracial and has never met her father, but she looks and thinks a lot like him—down to her brown skin, curly hair, and thirst for knowledge. Though Angie grew up with her devoted white mother, Marilyn, she’s always felt the absence of the man she never knew. But after discovering that her mom has been lying to her, Angie sets off on a road trip to Los Angeles in search of an unknown uncle—and maybe even her dad. At seventeen, she hopes to finally find out the truth about where she came from so she can discover who she truly is.
Told from two perspectives, Marilyn's in Los Angeles in the late 1990s and Angie's in modern times, In Search of Us is a sweeping intergenerational story about mothers and daughters, love and loss, holding on and letting go.
Everyone is searching for something
Marilyn is searching for freedom. She grew up as a child actor her mother’s meal ticket out of mediocrity. But it’s been a long time since she booked a job, and without her contribution to their meager income, she and her mom have no choice but to move in with her volatile uncle. Marilyn is counting down the days until she can escape to college, and the promise of making her own future. That is, until she falls in love with James, the boy downstairs, who shows her that life is worth living in the present. At seventeen, Marilyn is about to learn that everything can change in an instant.
Angie is in search of answers. She is biracial and has never met her father, but she looks and thinks a lot like him—down to her brown skin, curly hair, and thirst for knowledge. Though Angie grew up with her devoted white mother, Marilyn, she’s always felt the absence of the man she never knew. But after discovering that her mom has been lying to her, Angie sets off on a road trip to Los Angeles in search of an unknown uncle—and maybe even her dad. At seventeen, she hopes to finally find out the truth about where she came from so she can discover who she truly is.
Told from two perspectives, Marilyn's in Los Angeles in the late 1990s and Angie's in modern times, In Search of Us is a sweeping intergenerational story about mothers and daughters, love and loss, holding on and letting go.
★"Dellaira's debut novel, Love Letters to the Dead was good; her second, which tells two connected tales set 18 years apart is spectacular."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"In Search of Us is a rare and special book. Part mother-daughter love story, part road trip journey, part compelling mystery, and one hundred percent beautiful, spellbinding tearjerker. I'm in love with every page."— Jennifer Niven, New York Times–bestselling author of All the Bright Places and Holding up the Universe
Ava Dellaira is the author of the bestselling Love Letters to the Dead. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. She was an associate producer of Stephen Chbosky's feature film adaptation of his bestselling novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Do you love taking photos? Do you really love taking photos of books? Enter the In Search of Us Photo Contest for a chance to win an awesome prize pack including a Fujifilm Instax Mini 9 camera, a $100 Visa gift card, and more!
To enter, upload a photo of IN SEARCH OF US by Ava Dellaira on Instagram using the hashtag #InSearchOfUsPhotoContest and tagging @FierceReads.
Winners will be chosen by Ava Dellaira on 5/1, so enter while you still can!
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No purchase necessary. Open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and D.C. who are age 13 or older. Entry period begins at 12:01 a.m. (ET) on March 7, 2018 and ends at 11:59 p.m. ET on May 1, 2018. Void where prohibited. For full Official Rules, visit http://mackidsbooks.com/insearchofusphotocontestrules/. Sponsored by Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. The Contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram.
Listen to the tape that James makes for Marilyn in In Search of Us.
© 2017 Macmillan Publishers
© 2017 Macmillan Publishers