Favorite book of the year (or perhaps my life)! I cried on no less than three separate occasions throughout. 

The story is narrated by Birdie Lee and begins when she is three and speaking a made-up language with her older sister. The language itself reminded me of the nonsense words my mom used to use. So, before I even got to the meat of the story, it was already reminding me of my mom. 

The sisters are mixed-race, and one ends up moving to Brazil with their black dad while one (Birdie) stays with their white mom. Sandy, the mom, is fat, brilliant, rebellious, and different than her entire family. She drinks beer and listens to Bob Dylan. She keeps Birdie close even as she allows shady men in her life. She sees beauty in things others don't notice. Instead of telling Deck, her ex-husband, she loves him, she says, "I miss you."

This is the exact kind of book I'm always looking for. It's in the same vein as Beloved and The Lover: books that portend to be about something bigger than "just" a mother, but really boil down to just that. I'm not saying Caucasia doesn't have other themes - it certainly does: race, class, fatness - but at its heart it's about daughterhood and what it means to be a mother.