
- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
MOST ANTICIPATED READ and MUST READ OF 2024: The Millions, LitHub, Esquire, BookRiot, Bustle, Vulture, Boston Globe, Brit & Co, Southern Living
“Woman of Interest is a memoir wrapped in a mystery—an inward examination of family, identity, and self, but also an actual gumshoe detective story. Each extraordinary, prickly sentence is conjured with clarity and conflict. Funny, moving, mean—an exceptional book from an extraordinary writer.” —Kevin Nguyen, author of New Waves
“Dark, deeply funny. . . . Dashiell Hammett meets Fleabag.”—The New Yorker
A National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honoree delivers her first work of nonfiction: a compulsively readable, genre-bending story of finding her missing birth mother and, along the way, learning the priceless power of self-knowledge.
In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she’d never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea.
After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O’Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done, picking up the trail of clues and becoming her own hell-bent detective. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover—the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own—was too tempting.
Written like a mystery novel, Woman of Interest is a tale of self-discovery and fugitivity from convention that features a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family. O’Neill gorgeously bends the detective genre to her own will as a writer, stepping out of the shadows of her own self-conception to illuminate the hopes of the woman of interest she is both chasing and becoming.
Frequently asked questions
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Information
Table of contents
- Dedication
- Epigraphs
- Contents
- Chapter One: Mother of Reckoning
- Chapter Two: The Second Call
- Chapter Three: Leave No Witness
- Chapter Four: What We Were Really Doing
- Chapter Five: This Is Not a Road Trip
- Chapter Six: Give Me a Second
- Chapter Seven: Beware the Boat
- Chapter Eight: Red Herring
- Chapter Nine: Middleman
- Chapter Ten: A Stranger Comes to Town
- Chapter Eleven: Hearsay
- Chapter Twelve: On Suspicion
- Chapter Thirteen: Use of Force
- Chapter Fourteen: Last Stand at Daejeon
- Chapter Fifteen: This Might Be a Road Trip
- Chapter Sixteen: The House That Eomma Built
- Chapter Seventeen: Postmortem
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright
- About the Publisher