At it's core, My Long Trip Home is a very American story, even though it spans three continents. Reviewers will be tempted to peg this as a book about race and racial identity, but it is so much more than that. It is a book about family, and the family just happens to be multiracial. Given today's shifting racial demographics, I can't think of anything more American.

Mark Whittaker has done some serious research on his family and he has done a tremendous amount of soul searching. This was a book written out of love, not bitterness, although Whittaker does have a right to be bitter about some aspects of his life. I was so taken by this book that I read it in only a couple of sittings.