In her new memoir, A.M. Homes writes: "I grew up furious. I feared that there was something about me, some defect of birth that made me repulsive, unlovable."
Adopted as a newborn, Homes later learned the barest outlines of her birth — that she was the child of a young, single woman and her older, married lover.
When she was 31, Homes — now a fiction writer — learned that her biological mother was looking for her. She chronicles what unfolded after that in The Mistress's Daughter.
Homes talks to Melissa Block about her disappointments with her biological mother, who "lived in a fantasy world that was lost in time, that was about the moment she gave me up."
The author also describes the pain and bitterness she felt after meeting her charming and charismatic biological father — who asked her to take a DNA test and refused to include her in his family after promising to do so.
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