Three months after Kyo Maclear's father dies in December 2018, she gets the result of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, desperately seeking answers from her ailing mother whose memories and English are failing. Maclear no longer speaks Japanese, her mother's first language, so she turns to her mother's second fluent tongue: the wild and green language of soil, seed, leaf and mulch. Can the humble act of tending a garden provide common ground for an inquisitive daughter and her complicated mother? What role does storytelling play in unearthing the past and making sense of a life? What gets planted and what gets buried? Unearthing is a captivating and propulsive story of inheritance that goes far beyond heredity, full of unflinching insights into grief, loyalty and the relationship between mothers and daughters.

"A lucid and compelling memoir of family rupture and repair and the power of plants to anchor us in the world" - Sue Stuart-Smith, author of the Sunday Times Bestseller The Well Gardened Mind

"Three months after the death of her father, Maclear discovered they were not biologically related but finding the truth proves difficult as her mother's language and memory are failing. Instead, mother and daughter begin to tend a garden together as Maclear begins to unearth the past..." - Stylist's pick of the best non-fiction for 2024

"An alluring blend of grief, racial identity and memory" - The Bookseller