Peggy Barnes has written a remarkable, wise, and generous memoir about her search for her birth mother, Pauline, a young woman from the back hills of Alabama. It takes a gutsy and determined person to embark upon such a quest, armed with nothing but a name. It takes a truly gifted writer to tell the story with such warmth and wit. Her story is their story: a deeply moving portrait of two women, separated by circumstances but united through the power of words. In I Knew You By Name, Peggy has written a gorgeous love letter to the courageous woman she never had a chance to know. I only wish Pauline could have read it, too.
Stephanie Harrison, Author of Adaptation: From Short Story to Big Screen.
For sixty-five years all Peggy Barnes knew of her beginnings was what she could recall: herself at age two, a child with big feet and a vocabulary that included little baby talk. The only mother she ever knew claimed she never, ever cried.
Then, Alabama unsealed the records of adoptive children's births. Peggy learned she is the daughter of Pauline Miller, unwed daughter of a sharecropping family and the man for whom her mother ironed shirts.
The letters Pauline wrote back to the home from which she'd fled in shameful exile reveal her heartbreaking life. In lush Southern language laced with surprising wit, Peggy extrapolates from these letters-saved by an unknown cousin in the proverbial dust-covered trunk-to venerate the woman who gave her birth, uncovering striking similarities to the life she herself has lived.
Nancy Pinard, Author of Shadow Dancing and Butterfly Soup.
Peggy Barnes worked as a freelance food and travel writer and restaurant critic. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. Her award-winning short stories have been widely published in literary magazines. Excepts from I Knew You by Name have been published in Halfway Down the Stairs and Gravel. Peggy lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband and two dogs.
