With the paperback release of her book, Melissa Cistaro will discuss her journey of publishing her memoir Pieces of My Mother and the unexpected gifts she found along the way.

From the events coordinator of San Francisco's amazing Book Passage comes Pieces of My Mother, a provocative memoir that explores the complex emotional landscape of a child abandoned by her mother

One summer, Melissa Cistaro's mother drove off without a word. Devastated, Melissa and her brothers were left to pick up the pieces, wondering why their mother abandoned them. Decades later, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington with her dying mother and just days to find out what happened that summer and confront the fear she could do the same to her kids. She never expects to stumble on a cache of letters her mother wrote but never sent her, which could hold the answers she seeks. Haunting yet ultimately uplifting, Pieces of My Mother reveals how our parents' choices impact our own and how we can survive those to forge our own paths.

Melissa Cistaro is an events coordinator at Book Passage, the legendary San Francisco Bay Area independent bookstore. A writer and mother, she has been published in numerous literary journals, as well as in two anthologies alongside Anne Larnott, Jane Smiley, and others.