Saturday's Child

February 15, 2019
The upstate New York resort that her family built was a magical place for Deborah as a child. Swimming along the pool's edge to catch snatches of the women's conversations, playing on the porch, or punching buttons on the jukebox in the lounge while the musicians were resting, she hovered on the edges of an adult world where her mother, often compared to Rita Hayworth, was the undeniable star. The redhead would hold court under the adoring gaze of her daughter, who only saw her mother on weekends during the summer. It was a far cry from the rest of the year, which Deborah spent in a cramped city apartment with her father and the two unmarried aunts who raised her. And, yet, like all her memories of her distant, unconventional mother, those days are suffused with the sadness of someone looking for explanations as to why her mother was so rarely there with her. Poignant and absorbing, Saturday's Child carefully examines how a daughter's childhood obsession became a more complicated reckoning with her mother's secrets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)