The Color of Water
By James McBride

My mother is white and my father is black, so I felt an immediate connection to this story of an interracial family. It's a memoir written by the son of a Jewish woman and a black Baptist minister. The story follows his mother's efforts to find acceptance. Eventually, she decides to give up her faith and become a Baptist. She's criticized for doing so, and that's really what the book is about—how she chooses to live her life, how she's judged and how her decisions affect her children.