“What Kind of Mother, Bernadette Murphy’s lovely, searing new memoir about the search for the baby she relinquished for adoption when she was seventeen, is not only a profound book, it’s an important one. There are not a lot of memoirs told from the mother’s point of view and this one is especially poignant as Murphy alternates chapters with her sometimes harrowing Irish Catholic childhood in Southern California. A must read!”—Ann Hood, author of Comfort: A Journey Through Grief

“Bernadette Murphy’s What Kind of Mother arrives in an American moment where the fight for universal reproductive justice has grown existential. Murphy’s story—exquisitely rendered in sharp, crystalline prose—presents a human voice to contrast the ruling class’s abstracted legislation of terror. Murphy writes, ‘I absorbed the shame the culture laid on me without ever questioning if it was mine.’ I suspect I will not be the only person wracked by these words, by this book.”—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

“The adoption story we’ve needed for decades. Brave, beautiful, impossible to forget.”—Minka Kelly, author of Tell Me Everything

“Bernadette Murphy’s What Kind of Mother is a searing, gutting, graceful braid of two stories—one of relinquishment, the other of reunion—that filled me with awe and gratitude. We need this book now more than ever, in an era when reproductive freedom is under attack, but its impact feels utterly timeless—this story about loss and repair, hope and survival, the capaciousness of family and the humbling surprises a life can bring. This book reached the deepest parts of me, and it will stay with me for good.”—Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams