My Roots, My Self

Clutching a childhood photo to her heart, Jenny asks, ‘Who is the real me?’ before setting off to find the parents who abandoned her. Centuries earlier, Macuya channels the courageous spirit of his father to survive being kidnapped into a hostile world.

Thus begins My Roots, My Self, a gripping historical novel intertwining two epic journeys from 1975 Minnesota to the blood-soaked origins of the Italian Mafia and Spanish Inquisition. A fresh and engaging story about a dual search for self-identity: one character searching back to remove the stains of her crime family, the other striving ahead to forge a family legacy in a racist society.

Jenny’s search starts in Boston, where the FBI detains her after an ill-fated meeting with members of the Anguilo crime family, people of her blood. Threatened but determined, she heads to Sicily and meets a mercurial genealogist who unlocks the secrets of her lineage and her path to freedom.

Macuya, a native of the West Indies, is torn from home and family by Columbus and taken to Spain, where Queen Isabella adopts him as a mascot. Later freed with a baron’s title, he secretly marries Beka, the Jewish love of his life. Together, they move from country to country to escape being burned at the stake.

With six centuries of separation, the reader is plucked from the now and wrenched into the mysteries of the past as both characters struggle forward to find the freedom to honor their true selves.

My Roots, My Self will appeal to fans who were enthralled with the search for faith and home in Scherman’s The Mapmaker’s Daughter, who cherished the journey of self-discovery in Shapiro’s Inheritance and loved the historical intrigue of Cornick’s The Winter Garden.

“I received an advance copy of My Roots, My Self and wow what an emotional ride. Jenny’s struggle to understand where she came from hit me hard; it made me think about my own family stories and what’s been passed down to me. I loved how the book shifted between her story and Macuya’s in 1492. At first, I didn’t see how the two connected, but by the end, it all came together beautifully. This is one of those books that stays with you long after you close it.”

– Abraham Alejandro, Member, Oprah’s Book Club.

“I was lucky enough to get a copy of My Roots, My Self, and I have to say, it’s one of the most unique family sagas I’ve read. I loved the cultural details, the Slovenian pastries, the Taino rituals, the Boston immigrant neighborhoods; they made the story feel alive. Jenny was such a relatable character: restless, a little lost, but determined. And Macuya’s chapters absolutely broke my heart. If you enjoy books about family secrets, ancestry, and identity, this is a must-read.”

– Betty Burgess, What’s the Name of the Book? Book Club.

Readers may know DD Berquist as a pen name of Tom Berquist, whose love of animals inspired his early novels about wildlife. These include Stalking Los Angeles, about a lonely Native American boy and a lone mountain lion; Clan of the Wolfdogs, about how wolves developed into working tools and loyal companions; and Somewhere Beyond the Sea, about how the love and respect for a fellow mammal, the dolphin, brought two people together to save thousands of lives. However, these stories are really about people, so DD captured the spirit and journey of characters, like himself, who searched for their ancestors to learn more about themselves. With his equal passion for history and spending tens of thousands of hours down the rabbit hole of genealogy research, DD penned My Roots, My Self.