@ Busboys and Poets Takoma: Melissa Cistaro - Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir

Growing up with their father, Cistaro, a San Francisco bookseller, and her two brothers, blamed themselves for causing their mother to abandon the family. Still feeling the effects of the guilt and neglect three decades later, when her dying mother contacted her, Cistaro struggled to understand what had happened. Her wrenching and deeply compelling memoir recounts her difficult years both with and without her mother, and her worries that she could inflict similar pain on her own children.