Finding Me

Private high school. Designer shoes. A luxury Manhattan high-rise. Eighteen-year-old New Yorker Cate McDermott appears to live a life of wealth and privilege, but she’d trade it all for one moment of sweet simplicity with her workaholic mother, Susan.

Corporate law firm. Leather briefcase. International business trips. Thirty-seven-year-old attorney Susan McDermott, known as the Ruthless Tigress of New York City, has spent years building a carefully controlled life, determined to keep the pain of her past buried. But when she misses Cate’s graduation ceremony and clarinet concerto performance, the fragile bond between mother and daughter begins to fracture.

For Cate, it’s the last splinter in a lifetime of broken promises. Then Susan reveals a devastating secret: somewhere in Michigan, lives the family Cate has longed for her entire life—but never knew existed. Against her mother’s wishes, Cate travels alone to Lake Tearas determined to uncover the truth about the family her mother kept hidden. But beneath the town’s charming storefronts and shimmering water lies decades of family secrets no one wants reopened.

As Cate pieces together the story Susan fought so hard to hide, she must decide whether discovering where she came from is worth risking everything she thought she knew about love, loyalty, and belonging.

Finding Me is a moving story of family secrets, forgiveness, and the courage it takes to discover where we truly belong.