Unearthing

A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets

By: Kyo Maclear

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Paperback | 27 May 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
416 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9 x 2.7

Paperback

$26.99

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A gripping and emotionally eloquent memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the transformative possibilities of growing plants

I wanted my mother's story. I wanted a tale that could put my world back together

Three months after Kyo Maclear's father dies, a DNA test reveals that they were not biologically related. All at once Kyo's mother becomes unknown to her; she has a big story to tell, the story of a secret buried for half a century, but her memories are fading. Words are failing them both, so she looks to gardening - her mother's second fluent tongue - to bridge the gap between them.

Unearthing is written in the wild green language of soil, seed, leaf and mulch. A memoir of inheritance that goes far beyond heredity, this is the story of what happens when we give up the weeded and pruned plots of our family histories and open ourselves up to a more expansive view of kinship. Told through the passage of seasons, with beautiful illustrations by the author, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on race, lineage and grief and a tender testimony to the ineradicable love between a mother and a daughter.

Industry Reviews

'A lucid and compelling memoir of family rupture and repair and the power of plants to anchor us in the world' - Sue Stuart-Smith, author of the Sunday Times Bestseller The Well Gardened Mind

'Magnificent...I will never forget it' - Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

'A mind-altering and supremely generous exploration of kinship, selfhood, memory, and the roots we share across time, space and species' - Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything

'A lyrical and at times cryptic meditation on nature, kinship and the lives of both humans and plants' - New Statesman

'In this beautiful book Kyo Maclear unravels the knotty stories we inherit - and create - about who we are and where we come from. With deftness and clarity she ranges from meditations on memory, belonging and truth, to the earthy tangibility of the garden. Fierce, loving, inquisitive, devastating - this book got under my nails and into my heart. I loved it' - Lulah Ellender, author of Grounding

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