The Inner Sea - by Kate Stapleton (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An exceptionally honest and emotionally precise memoir about a birth mother and the daughter she didn't raise--an intimate portrait of motherhood in all its forms, and the long, winding road between letting go and finding each other again.

For readers of Educated and Maid, this stirring memoir traces one woman's path from a deeply religious off-the-grid upbringing through heartbreak, reinvention, and an unexpected reunion decades in the making.

When Kate Stapleton becomes pregnant in the midst of an unstable and destructive relationship, she is forced to make the most impossible decision of her life: placing her daughter for adoption. In the years that follow, Kate rebuilds from the ground up--working in orchards, studying the harp, falling in love, becoming a mother again, and slowly learning that grief and joy can live side by side.

Then, years later, her firstborn daughter attends college just an hour away from Kate's home. As mother and daughter begin to forge a relationship of their own, Kate must confront the question that has shaped her life: What does it mean to love a child you didn't raise?

Read this unforgettable memoir to witness a hard-won story of love, loss, and reunion that expands our understanding of motherhood.

About the Author

Kate Stapleton is a harpist, dancer, theatre and film producer, and author. She grew up in the driftless ridges of Western Wisconsin, composing soap operas while hanging laundry on the line. She has consistently found herself barefoot in the big city and wearing four-inch heels in the barnyard. She spent several years running a theatre company, unloading trucks of produce, getting lost in the mountains on the way to photograph farmers with secret stores of moonshine, and living in a cabin with no plumbing. To her surprise, she currently loves living in the big city of Pittsburgh with her husband and their six children. She placed her first child for adoption and shares the story of how that choice led to her current life touring musically in a 40-foot bright blue school bus in her memoir (also an award-winning documentary film), The Inner Sea.