The title of Kelly Corrigan's frank, funny, moving new memoir, The Middle Place, refers to being caught between childhood and adulthood, between still needing that sense of support from your parents while taking responsibility for children of your own. It's about family and adversity and Corrigan's larger-than-life father, George, a bighearted lacrosse coach and salesman who warms every room he enters and starts each day by yelling, "Hello, world!" out the window. And it's about cancer-both the author's and her father's. Corrigan's book is provocative and wry, with touching anecdotes about her dad and unflinching accounts of the author's own strengths and weaknesses, from her days as a wild teenager to that day as a 36-year-old mother of two when she had to call home with troubling news. "And that's what this whole thing is about," Corrigan writes. "Calling home. Instinctively. Even when all the paperwork—a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns—clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter."

Borders Book Club with Kelly Corrigan