OTB #7: HERITAGE OF HATE (YA Contemporary)

TITLE: Heritage of Hate
GENRE: YA Contemporary

When fourteen year old Zoe discovers her birth father is alive, her search for the truth carries her towards a world her biracial family has hidden from her. From the shadows of a white supremacist group, her father hopes to destroy everything Zoe holds dear, in his own quest to leave behind a heritage of hate.

I’ve never seen a photograph of my first dad. Not ever in all my fourteen years on this planet. We married young. We married stupid. And then he died. That’s all my mom ever says about their life together. An entire marriage summed up in ten words.

“You must have some pictures,” I would say. “You didn’t take a wedding picture? Pictures when you were dating?”

“They got lost when we moved up here from California,” she’d remind me, as if I could remember a trip that took place twelve years ago.

“All of them? Every last one? Nanna and Poppa don’t have any?” I was relentless. It seemed completely impossible that there would be no evidence of my father anywhere. It was bad enough he’d never even met me.

“Cliff died when you were still in my tummy,” Mom told me a long time ago. “He never met you. Never knew you.” And her eyes would go blank and I could tell she wasn’t with me anymore but was somewhere in the past. With Cliff, maybe?  I didn’t like that look on her face but it never stopped me from badgering her about photos.

I run my fingers over the snapshots in the shoebox sitting on my lap as I stare at the photograph I just found. Two adults. One baby.The woman’s dark curly hair surrounds her face.Her big brown eyes stare straight into the camera.Younger, but definitely Mom.