Deborah Burns is a former Chief Innovation Office and brand leader for ELLEgirl, ELLE Décor, Metropolitan Home, and ELLE Global Marketing. Now a media industry consultant, she helps brands, executives, and professional women reinvent themselves through her expertise, coaching process, and website, skirtingtherules.com, which she founded. Beneath her business leader exterior, however, always beat the heart of a writer, and several years ago she began the creative journey to write Saturday’s Child and tell her mother’s story. She lives on Long Island, New York with her husband and their three children.

An only child, Deborah Burns grew up in the conservative 1950s in the shadow of her beautiful, unconventional mother, Dorothy—a red-haired beauty who skirted norms with a style that made her the darling of men and women alike. Married to the son of a renowned Italian-American family with ties to the underworld, Dorothy eschewed motherhood and domesticity and turned Deborah over to her aunts to raise. Obsessed by her charismatic mother, Deborah wanted to be just like her. But Dorothy was a forever unattainable woman of secrets—a mistress of illusion and mythic figure whose love was always just out of her daughter’s grasp.

Saturday’s Child tells Deborah’s story of emerging from under the wings of her maverick mother, and her quest in her own midlife to uncover the truth about their complex relationship. A fascinating depiction of the searing bond that exists between all mothers and daughters, this memoir is a mesmerizing read for any daughter who’s ever tried to figure out where her mother ends and she begins.