Book excerpt: Shortly after his mother dies of breast cancer when he is ten years old, author Michael Blumenthal discovers a startling fact: His mother was not his biological mother, and his aunt and uncle, immigrant chicken farmers living in Vineland, New Jersey, are really his parents. As fate would have it, his father, a German-Jewish refugee raised by a loveless and embittered stepmother after his own mother died in childbirth, has inflicted on his adoptive son a fate uncannily -- and terrifyingly -- similar to his own: Having first adopted Michael, in part, to help his dying wife, he then imposes on him the same sort of penurious and loveless stepmother whom he had to survive. With these revelations, the "mysteries" that seem to have permeated Michael's childhood are laid bare, triggering a quest for belonging that will infiltrate the author's entire adult life. All My Mothers and Fathers is Michael Blumenthal's moving and powerful account of how he put his life together, and made both a break from and peace with his past.