Bastards, Mary Anna King
Bastards, Mary Anna King
2 Rating(s)
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Bastards
A Memoir

Author: Mary Anna King

Narrator: Christina Delaine

Unabridged: 7 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/22/2015


Synopsis

In the early 1980s, Mary Hall is a little girl growing up in poverty in Camden, New Jersey, with her older brother Jacob and parents who, in her words, were great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them. After her father leaves the family, she is raised among a commune of mothers in a low-income housing complex. Then, no longer able to care for the only daughter she has left at home, Mary's mother sends Mary away to a small town in Oklahoma to live with her maternal grandparents, who have also been raising her older sister, Rebecca. When Mary is legally adopted by her grandparents, the result is a family story like no other. Because Mary was adopted by her grandparents, Mary's mother, Patty, is legally her sister, while her brother, Jacob, is legally her nephew.

Living in Oklahoma with her maternal grandfather, Mary gets a new name and a new life. But she's haunted by the past: by the baby girls she's sure will come looking for her someday, by the mother she left behind, by the father who left her. Mary is a college student when her sisters start to get back in touch. With each subsequent reunion, her family becomes closer to whole again.

Moving, haunting, and at times wickedly funny, Bastards is about finding ones family and oneself.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura

Incredibly well written. I was completely enthralled, start to finish. Full review to come. Full/Updated Review: I love memoirs. I love how unabashed they can be and how the best ones radiate an inherent, undeniable truth. What I've come to understand though, is that you can't always rely on memoirs f......more

Goodreads review by Brian

This is not the last time you will hear me say this, and it is definitely not the first time either. If you are going to write a memoir, the story you tell should be engaging and interesting. This story was kind of flat for me. A young girl grows up with a mother who can't take care of her kids that......more