Search - Dear Senator : A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond

From the back cover:

"In her New York Times bestselling memoir Dear Senator, Essie Mae Washington-Williams - daughter of the late senator Strom Thurmond - breaks her lifelong silence and tells the story of her life. Until the age of sixteen, Washington-Williams assumed that the aunt and uncle who raised her in Pennsylvania were her parents. The revelation that her father was the longtime senator from South Carolina - once the nation's leading voice for racial segregation - and that her mother was Carrie Butler, the Thurmond family's fifteen-year-old black maid, was a shock that would change the course of her life.

Set against the explosively changing times of the civil rights movement, Washington-Williams's memoir reveals a brave young woman who struggled with the discrepancy between the father she knew - one who was financially generous, supportive of her education, even affectionate - and the old-South politician, railing against racial equality, who refused to acknowledge their relationship in public. Told with elegance, candor, and spirit, Dear Senator is a classic American story that will be heard and cherished by generations."