Today I talked to David Tereshchuk about his memoir A Question of Paternity: My Life As an Unaffiliated Reporter (Envelope Books, 2024)

Tereshchuk leapt from a bleak childhood in a small town on the English-Scottish borders to a precocious high-flying career as a TV reporter, first in London, then in New York.

During his years as a journalist, he managed to elicit revealing statements from tyrants and the oppressed, but there was one person he never persuaded to open up to him—his mother.

He wanted to know just one thing: who his father was. It wasn't until he was in his 50s that she confided to having been raped, aged 15, by a priest – and even then, not all her information was reliable.

Alongside his career, the search for his mother’s abuser has haunted him, adding further layers of stress to a life already marked by alcoholism and insecurity.

This is his astonishing story, one that deserves to sit alongside those of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and David Brinkley, and another revelatory title from EnvelopeBooks.

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