Ghost Child, by Deborah Jennings

Uncovering Family Secrets from a Back Porch to the Yucatan

A young woman from a blue-collar background—aspiring and driven—spent over twenty years quietly wondering if the family who raised her was truly hers. At thirty-two, she confirmed the unthinkable: she is the biological daughter of another, entirely unknown family.

Her search unfolds like a page-turning mystery, leading to an astonishing discovery—her biological grandfather was a U.S. diplomat and author, photographed in the Oval Office with President Kennedy, greeting Charles Lindbergh on the tarmac, and meeting with Rosa Parks and international leaders. Her grandmother was a Cambridge-educated Mexican, who described to her an exotic heritage of haciendas and aristocracy in the Yucatan. Her birth mother, Katie, a Bohemian expatriate in Cuernavaca, Mexico, gave birth to her in secret and lived childless ever since.

Raised by loving parents who didn’t finish high school, she now must reconcile her upbringing with an extraordinary legacy. Ghost Child is a sweeping story of identity, belonging, and the strange, poignant bond between a daughter and the unforgettable birth mother she did not know.