From an Emmy Award-winning news anchor comes a fascinating memoir about work, family, and the hidden secrets that ultimately shape our lives.

Five nights a week, María Elena Salinas delivers the news to millions of television viewers. But when the newscast is over, she is, like so many other women across the country, a wife and mother who struggles to balance her personal life and her career. When she accidentally discovers that her beloved father was at one time a Catholic priest, she is stunned. All that she knew and had based her life upon is suddenly thrown into question. Turning her investigative eye on herself for the first time, she begins a long, arduous journey for answers.

In I Am My Father's Daughter, María Elena tells the amazing story of her journey to the top amid her struggle to come to terms with family secrets. From her childhood in a poverty-stricken Los Angeles neighborhood and her adolescent years spent working in a southern California sweatshop to her astonishing break into network television and her coverage of some of the world's major events and disasters, María Elena delivers the story of her life behind the camera, and that of her deceased father, in the same warm and straightforward tone that has become her on-air trademark.

"When Salinas, a three-time Emmy-winning news anchor for Noticiero Univisin, started working, in 1981, there weren't many minority women in positions of authority in the news business. At that time, most Spanish-language programming came from Mexico and didn't reflect the interests or perspectives of Hispanic-Americans. As Salinas recounts the story of her successful career, she credits her hard-working parents, straight-laced upbringing, willingness to try new things and largely on-the-job training in news reporting. Like other media memoirs (such as Andrea Mitchell's 2005 Talking Back), this one contains irresistible firsthand accounts of interviewing political celebrities, in this case Noriega, Pinochet, Fujimori and subcomandante Marcos. There's a second, more personal thread woven into the career story: Salinas's mission to discover the truth about her recently deceased father, who, it turns out, was a Catholic priest before marrying her mother. Although this quest never becomes a major plot, some passages from Salinas's father's writings are remarkable, particularly his 1944 letter to the U.S. Department of War declining to 'sacrifice my life... the most esteemed human asset... to defend a system that... lacks a seal of kindness.' This entry into the crowded memoir category would be a great graduation gift for a career-oriented young Latina." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

MarÍa Elena Salinas has been a journalist with Univision for twenty-five years. She has won three Emmy Awards, and recently created the MarÍa Elena Salinas Scholarship for Excellence in Spanish-Language News Media.

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MarÍa Elena Salinas ha trabajado como periodista en Univision durante los Últimos veinticinco aÑos. Ha sido galardonada con tres premios Emmy y recientemente creÓ una beca de estudios llamada MarÍa Elena Salinas Scholarship for Excellence in Spanish-Language News Media.