In this powerful, searingly intimate book, accomplished journalist, poet and fiction writer Jonetta Rose Barras, breaks the silence and gives voice to the experiences of America's fatherless women - starting with herself.

"I know fatherlessness," writes Barras. "A girl abandoned by the first man in her life forever entertains powerful feelings of being unworthy or incapable of receiving any man's love.

Even when she receives love...she is intensely fearful of losing it. This is the anxiety, the pain of losing one father. I had three fathers toss me aside; the cumulative effect was catastrophic."

"A long overdue exploration of a legacy that cripples and maims women and everyone they love. With withering honesty, bravery, and the lyrical soul of a poet, Barras has given us a hymn of hope that is a song for fatherless duaghters everywhere."

- Marita Golden, Author of A Miracle Every Day: Triumph and Transformation in the Lives of Single Mothers

"Any little girl - black or white - who ever cried out for a daddy who wasn't there will recognize herself in this moving and eloquent personal memoir of a fatherless daughter. She will find strength and courage in the stories of her sisters who are living through a personal tragedy of pain, loss and renewal with profound implications for all of us."

- Suzanne Fields, syndicated columnist and author of Like Father, Like Daughter: How a Father Shapes the Woman His Daughter Becomes