From Booklist
Regina Pearson has reached the ripe age of 40 knowing nothing about her family, so after her father's death she decides it's time to leave Hawaii, where she's lived with native Hawaiians, having no clue about African American life on the mainland. She finds an aunt in New Bern, North Carolina, who welcomes her, but the rest of the family keeps their distance. Regina takes a job managing a large hotel and there meets Colonel Justin Duval, who is designing the hotel's interior, and even though they clash at work, a personal relationship develops that is threatened by Regina's quest to have a relationship with her relatives. Justin would rather live without his large extended family and can't comprehend Regina's desire to wade into her gene pool. Regina realizes that maybe she had unrealistic expectations, but her tenacity starts to yield results even as her new family ties jeopardize her relationship with Justin. Forster's sensitive portrayal of a woman trying to find her roots offers some unusual offshoots and is a cut above the ordinary. Patty Engelmann
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FROM THE PUBLISHER

Regina Pearson has never really known any family other than her late, widowed father. He cut ties with his own relatives in North Carolina long ago and moved to Hawaii, then raised Regina alone following her mother￯﾿ﾽs accidental death. Living among the native Hawaiians so different from herself created in Regina a yearning for people to call her own. Then she finds among her late parents￯﾿ﾽ effects a letter written forty years earlier that leads to her mother￯﾿ﾽs sister, Maude, a been-there, done-that blues singer, and her nonagenarian maternal grandfather, head of the extended family in New Bern, North Carolina.