Somebody's Daughter

Ford grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, loving a father she barely knew, because he was in prison for reasons no one would explain to her. Somebody's Daughter builds toward the revelation of his crime while telling a fuller story of Black girlhood, poverty, a complicated mother and a body learning to claim its own desire.

Ford is a generous, immediate writer, and the memoir moves on the strength of her voice - warm, searching, unwilling to flatten anyone into hero or villain. intendle recommends it as a coming-of-age story about the questions families keep and the cost of keeping them. An instant New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, it announced a distinctive new memoirist.