Caroline Clarke

I grabbed this because it's about the family of Nat King Cole, whom I loved. But he turns out to be a very minor character. Instead, this is the story of Cookie and Caroline, adopted daughter of Nat King Cole and birth mother to Caroline, adopted granddaughter of Nat King Cole.

There's a tangled web of families to sort out. Caroline is happy and successful, having been parented by two wonderful educators who adopted her when she was a month old. She has a good marriage and two kids, and it's only some physical ailments that lead her back to the adoption agency to trace down her birth parents.

She finds that she has actually met her sister and grandmother while unknowingly being related to them.

Cookie is such an interesting woman! She herself was the daughter of Nat King Cole's wife Maria's sister. She is thrilled when Caroline finds her, but she is an agoraphobic and does most of her communicating via letters and postcards, which is frustrating and hurtful to Caroline. Caroline's adoptive parents are so wonderfully accepting of the whole fraught situation.

Caroline and Cookie are both insightful and sensitive souls. This books pulls the reader right into the heart of a unique American family. The only missing pieces are two men, fathers, who never appear. I hope Caroline finds even more good relations from them someday.… (más)