After her mother's death, Alyse Myers covets only one thing: a wooden box that sits in the back of a closet. Its contents have been kept from her for her entire life. When she was thirteen years old her mother promised she could have the box, "when I'm dead. In fact, it'll be my present to you."

Growing up in Queens in the 1960s and '70s, Alyse always yearned for more in life, while her mother settled for an unhappy marriage, an unsatisfying job, and ultimately a joyless existence. Her father drifts in and out of their home. There are harrowing fights, abject cruelty, and endless uncertainty. Throughout her childhood Alyse adamantly rejects everything about her mother's lifestyle, leaving her mother to ask "Who do you think you are?"

A personal portrait of a mother and daughter, Who Do You Think You Are? explores the profound and poignant revelations that so often can come to light only after a parent has died. Balancing childhood memories with adult observations, Alyse Myers creates a riveting and deeply moving narrative.

"Myers (v-p, brand programs for the New York Times) considered herself a 'daddy's girl,' until the death of her father when she was only 11 left her particularly lonely. In this dark though moving book, she explains that she never told her two younger sisters of her loneliness and found her mother's unpredictable cruelty truly bewildering. Although this was a working-class Jewish family in Queens in the 1960s and '70s, it wasn't the sort featured in storybooks. Her parents chain-smoked and fought endlessly, slinging curses at each other without a thought of their children listening. Alyse got herself into a gifted high school in Manhattan, found herself part-time jobs and enrolled in an affordable city college. It was only after she married and had a child herself that she started to understand her father had been a philanderer and her mother used morphine to cope. The greatest gift she gave her daughter was the determination to create a different sort of life for herself." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Here's a book so honest it won't let you off the hook. You may not realize it during the early pages, but it's a book about love. Indeed, it's a story where love is redefined, and even though it traces the sometimes unbearable relationship of mother and daughter, there are insights here for all of us. And the writing is masterly, taut, honest, and strangely satisfying." — Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes

"The moving story...pleasantly old-fashioned...touching, even tender, record of Myer's thorny mother's difficult life raising three girls alone."-The New York Times

"Myers provides a moving lesson. This journey has universal resonance for myriad readers."-LibraryJournal.com (starred)

In spare prose, Myers creates a riveting and deeply moving narrative to show what goes on behind closed doors in another person's life.

Alyse Myers lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. This is her first book.