The Names of My Mothers is the touching story of the tender and all- too-brief relationship forged late in life between Dianne Riordan (nee Susanne Sanders) and her birth mother. In 1942 Elizabeth Bynam Sanders was a young woman who left home under false pretenses and travelled to Our Lady of Victory, a home for unwed mothers in upstate New York. Shortly after surrendering her daughter for adoption, she returned to her life in Johnston County, North Carolina. She never married and never had another child of her own.

This powerful and moving memoir speaks of the profound need for connection. It is a story about identity, the hunger we feel for a sense of belonging and the ineffable significance of blood...