I Knew You by Name: The Search for My Lost Mother is a nonfiction memoir written by Peggy Barnes. The author was surrendered for adoption by her unmarried mother when she was two years old. The state of Alabama released her birth records when she was sixty-five. Both of her adoptive parents had died by then, and she realized it was finally time to discover who her birth mother was. It wasn’t an easy task, even with the birth records. Barnes finally prevailed upon her genealogist cousin, Kay, to help her track down her birth family. Pauline Miller, she discovered, had lived not far from where she herself had grown up, and had worked for the man who was to father her child. Barnes was moved when she realized that Pauline had raised her, for her first two years of life, in the little house where Pauline’s father and her evil step-mother lived. Pauline’s own mother, Elsie, had left the family when she was very young. Barnes was moved to discover that Pauline’s father loved and doted upon his little grandchild and was heartbroken when she and her mother did not return on that fateful day when Peggy was surrendered.

Peggy Barnes’ memoir, I Knew You by Name: The Search for My Lost Mother, is a poignant and very moving celebration of the life of her birth mother, Pauline Miller. While Barnes bears some metaphysical scarring from being raised by her proper Southern adoptive mother, this memoir is an uplifting and utterly fascinating recreation of the life of the young woman who was her birth mother and the ramifications of having a child out of wedlock in the 1940s, especially in the ultra pious deep South. Barnes at one point describes her memoir as a love story, and, indeed, that’s exactly what it is. She marvels over the pictures of the lovely Pauline, whose movie star good looks and personality surely would have taken her far if not for the pregnancy, while she mourns the ordeals Pauline encountered with her abusive first husband. And she shares all of her enthusiasm, hopes and imaginings fully and openly with the reader. I was quite taken with the empathy of the author, empathy which shines from every page of this most impressive memoir. I Knew You by Name: The Search for My Lost Mother is highly recommended.

What is in a name? Is it just a means of identification? Does it define the person? Peggy was not always Peggy. Her birth certificate identifies her as MariLouise Janelle Miller, daughter of an unwed woman, Pauline Miller. Peggy was adopted at the age of two. She doesn't remember a time before her adoption. She doesn't even know her birth name until, at the age of 65, she sees her real birth certificate for the first time. There had always been pieces to the puzzle of Peggy's life that just didn't fit. For one thing, she always called her adopted mother, Margaret, not Mom or Mommy or Mother, just Margaret. She cared for Margaret in her ailing years, but there was always a feeling of detachment. The birth certificate unleashed many emotions for Peggy, now a mother and a grandmother herself. Who was this woman, Pauline Miller of Shoal Creek, Alabama, this unwed woman who gave birth to Peggy/MariLouise? Who was this Miller family? And who is still alive to fill in the gaps of Peggy's birth story?

The questions abound as Peggy Barnes begins a journey in I Knew You by Name: The Search for My Lost Mother that not only unravels more questions about her birth mother and her birth family, but also reveals a new found knowledge of who she is, who Peggy is, and how similar Peggy's life is to that of her birth mother's. Peggy does find some cousins, and these cousins have kept a journal and some letters written by Pauline. The letters introduce Peggy to the mother she hasn't seen since the age of two, a woman she never really knew.

This is a powerful memoir, perhaps even two memoirs, two parallel stories that unravel simultaneously. The story of these women, Peggy Barnes and her birth mother, Pauline Miller, opens one's eyes to the plight of women in mid-twentieth-century North America. Peggy Barnes went looking for her birth mother. What she found was herself and a whole new definition of what it means to be alive.