Her Mother's Daughter by Linda Carroll

I never would have picked this book up to read but once I started, I read it all in one night. Author Linda Carroll is a therapist in Corvallis, Oregon. She is also the mother of Courtney Love and the daughter of Paula Fox. I only know Love from the tabloids in the grocery line but Paula Fox is a Newbery winning author and the reason I picked it up to read at all (She also doesn't actually appear in the story until the very last chapters). What I wasn't prepared for was the warts and all story of Carroll's life. Adopted at birth, her mother is uncomfortable at best with Linda's challenging personality and her father is one small doorway away from being a sexual threat. Her life is a long series of poor relationships and bad decisions. That she and her family survive at all is amazing. Behind all of this is the mystery of her birth mother. After her parents' death, she gets serious about the search and finds Paula Fox. Their reconciliation is bittersweet and completely believable.