Michelle Obama'sfamily sagais a remarkable, quintessentially American storya journey from slavery to the White House in five generations.Yet, until now, little has been reported on the First Lady's roots. Prodigiously researched, American Tapestrytraces the complex and fascinating tale of Michelle Obama's ancestors, a history that the First Lady did not even know herself. Rachel L. Swarns, a correspondent for the New York Times, brings into focus the First Lady's black, white, and multiracial forebears, and reveals for the first time the identity of Mrs. Obama's white great-great-great-grandfathera man who remained hidden in her lineage for more than a century. American Tapestryilluminates the lives of the ordinary people in Mrs. Obama's family tree who fought for freedom in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars; who endured the agonies of slavery, the disappointment of Reconstruction, the displacement of the Great Migration, and the horrors of Jim Crow to build a better future for their children.

Swarns even found a possible link to the Jewish Reform movement. Though it is an intimate family history,American Tapestryis also the collective chronicle of our changing nation, a nation in which racial intermingling lingers in the bloodlines of countless citizens and slavery was the crucible through which many family linesblack, white, and Native Americanwere forged. Epic in scopeand beautifully rendered, this is a singularly inspiring story with resonance for us all.