“In Search of Susanna is a lovely weaving together of threads from the ancestral past to tell a story of the present and future. The Susanna sought in this book—and beautifully evoked—is not only Suzanne Bunkers' great-great-grandmother but the author and her daughter as well. No one restores to us the lives of women across generations as gracefully and as movingly as Suzanne Bunkers.”—James Olney, Southern Review

 “Bunkers discovers that her own experience mothering a daughter outside of marriage provides the guiding thread through tangled webs of family secrets, village history, motherhood and daughterhood, legitimacy and illegitimacy. The reader accompanies her on her quest until the center of a mystery that is as personal as it is familial is attained: Bunkers' affinity with her nineteenth-century foremother.”—Annis Pratt, author of Dancing with Goddesses

 “In Search of Susanna is a compelling quest story in which Bunkers moves between Iowa and Luxembourg in search of not only her great-great-grandmother, Susanna, and family roots but her own self-identity as (great) granddaughter, daughter, scholar, single parent, mother. Growing pains, humility, and pride of accomplishment are reflected in family snapshots, an assemblage of chance and discovery that Bunkers resurrects and arranges with art, grace, and understanding.”—Lynn Z. Bloom, University of Connecticut