I wanted my mother's story. I wanted a tale that could put my world back together Three months after Kyo Maclear's father dies, a DNA test reveals that they were not biologically related. All at once Kyo's mother becomes unknown to her; she has a big story to tell, the story of a secret buried for half a century, but her memories are fading. Words are failing them both, so she looks to gardening - her mother's second fluent tongue - to bridge the gap between them. Unearthing is written in the wild green language of soil, seed, leaf and mulch. A memoir of inheritance that goes far beyond heredity, this is the story of what happens when we give up the weeded and pruned plots of our family histories and open ourselves up to a more expansive view of kinship. Told through the passage of seasons, with beautiful illustrations by the author, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on race, lineage and grief and a tender testimony to the ineradicable love between a mother and a daughter.

About the Author
Kyo Maclear is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and children's author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages and published in over twenty-five countries. She is the author of the hybrid memoir Birds Art Life (2017), winner of the Trillium Book Award. Kyo holds a doctorate in environmental humanities and is on faculty at the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA.


Book Information
ISBN 9781911590972
Author Kyo Maclear
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint ONE
Publisher Pushkin Press