Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
This riveting, nuanced memoir about unforgettable individuals thrown together by chance and DNA tells a story of nature, nurture, and coming to terms with one's true inheritance.
What is a “normal family,” and how do you go about making one? Chrysta Bilton’s magnetic, larger-than-life mother, Debra, yearned to have a child, but as a single gay woman in 1980s California, she had few options. Until one day, while getting her hair done in a Beverly Hills salon, she met a man and instantly knew he was the one she’d been looking for. Beautiful, athletic, artistic, and from a well-to-do family, Jeffrey Harrison appeared to be Debra’s ideal sperm donor.
A verbal agreement, a couple of thousand in cash, and a few squirts of a turkey baster later, and Chrysta was conceived. Over the years, Jeffrey would make regular appearances at the family home, which grew to include Chrysta’s baby sister. But how much did Debra really know about the man she’d chosen to father her daughters? And as a single mother torn between ferocious independence and abject dependence—on other women, alcohol, drugs, and the adrenaline of get-rich-quick schemes—what secrets of her own was she keeping?
It wasn’t until Chrysta was a young adult that she discovered just how much her parents had hidden from their daughters—and each other—including a shocking revelation with far-reaching consequences not only for Debra, Chrysta, and her sister, but for dozens and possibly hundreds of unsuspecting families across the country. After a lifetime of longing for a “normal family,” can Chrysta face the reality of her own, in all its complexity? Bringing us into the fold of a deeply dysfunctional yet fiercely loving clan that is anything but “normal,” this emotional roller coaster of a memoir will make you cry, laugh, and rethink the meaning of family.
Named a 'Best Book of the Summer' by LA Times, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon, Apple, Cup of Jo, Kirkus, Parade, & Today
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Chrysta Bilton. (2022). Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings. Little, Brown and Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Chrysta Bilton. 2022. Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings. Little, Brown and Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Chrysta Bilton, Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings. Little, Brown and Company, 2022.
MLA Citation (style guide)Chrysta Bilton. Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings. Little, Brown and Company, 2022.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 6 | 6 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780316536523
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B09L81TPTK
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780316536523
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780316536547
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Chrysta Bilton
- title
- Normal Family
- dateAdded
- 2022-07-08T22:09:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=7677409
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Normal Family On Truth Love and How I Met My 35 Siblings
- crossRefId
- 7677409
- subtitle
- On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings
- id
- A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6
- starRating
- 4
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: NormalFamily_9780316536523_7677409
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 487002
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780316536523
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 7/12/2022
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=a928c45e-9cc6-4757-9129-5cae1dc318c6&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: NormalFamily_7677409
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B09L81TPTK
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 7/12/2022
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=a928c45e-9cc6-4757-9129-5cae1dc318c6&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: NormalFamily_9780316536523_7677409
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780316536523
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 7/12/2022
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=a928c45e-9cc6-4757-9129-5cae1dc318c6&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Bilton, Chrysta
- name: Chrysta Bilton
- publishDate
- 2022-07-12T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Normal Family
- fullDescription
This riveting, nuanced memoir about unforgettable individuals thrown together by chance and DNA tells a story of nature, nurture, and coming to terms with one's true inheritance.
What is a “normal family,” and how do you go about making one? Chrysta Bilton’s magnetic, larger-than-life mother, Debra, yearned to have a child, but as a single gay woman in 1980s California, she had few options. Until one day, while getting her hair done in a Beverly Hills salon, she met a man and instantly knew he was the one she’d been looking for. Beautiful, athletic, artistic, and from a well-to-do family, Jeffrey Harrison appeared to be Debra’s ideal sperm donor.
A verbal agreement, a couple of thousand in cash, and a few squirts of a turkey baster later, and Chrysta was conceived. Over the years, Jeffrey would make regular appearances at the family home, which grew to include Chrysta’s baby sister. But how much did Debra really know about the man she’d chosen to father her daughters? And as a single mother torn between ferocious independence and abject dependence—on other women, alcohol, drugs, and the adrenaline of get-rich-quick schemes—what secrets of her own was she keeping?
It wasn’t until Chrysta was a young adult that she discovered just how much her parents had hidden from their daughters—and each other—including a shocking revelation with far-reaching consequences not only for Debra, Chrysta, and her sister, but for dozens and possibly hundreds of unsuspecting families across the country. After a lifetime of longing for a “normal family,” can Chrysta face the reality of her own, in all its complexity? Bringing us into the fold of a deeply dysfunctional yet fiercely loving clan that is anything but “normal,” this emotional roller coaster of a memoir will make you cry, laugh, and rethink the meaning of family.
Named a 'Best Book of the Summer' by LA Times, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon, Apple, Cup of Jo, Kirkus, Parade, & Today
- reviews
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
Starred review from May 1, 2022
"The story of how I came into this world didn't begin in a bedroom, or bar, or on a beach with two lovers holding hands, gazing into each other's eyes under a pink sky as they professed their mutual adoration," writes Bilton in her compelling debut memoir. Instead, her single, lesbian mother Debra, currently sober after "getting high on every drug, religion, and sexual experiment to come out of the 1960s and '70s" and longing to have a child, met beautiful hippie Jeffrey Harrison at a Beverly Hills hair salon, then paid him $2,000 for a sperm donation and a promise that he would "never do this for anyone else." Feeling ashamed for "not giving us a father in the "real" sense of the word," Debra paid Jeffrey to give her foot massages, sporadically visiting Chrysta, and to likewise father her sister Kaitlyn. He also visited the California Cryobank for a decade as Donor 150, a secret revealed years later along with the arrival of her 35 (and possibly hundreds more) siblings. VERDICT Eloquently written and compulsively readable, Bilton's jaw-dropping coming-of-age memoir--and the love and survival found within its pages--is one readers won't soon forget.--Denise Miller
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
July 28, 2023
After discovering that she had over 30 siblings debut author Bilton devoted herself to retracing her father's steps in order to understand her own origin story. In 1980s California, there were few options for LGBTQI+ people to become parents. Desperately wanting to start a family of her own, Bilton's mother, Debra, approached friends and was turned down. After a chance encounter with a man named Jeffrey, Debra decided to have a child via sperm donor. Jeffrey was a handsome free spirit, came from a wealthy family, and was generally everything that Debra sought in a donor. With Jeffrey's donor sperm, Debra became pregnant and felt she had created a perfect life. But what follows includes years of lying, with much of it centered around the fact that Jeffrey turned his one-time favor to Debra into a full-scale career of fathering children, complicating not only Debra's life, but the lives of her children, including the author. This debut memoir is a heartfelt rumination on the power of familial bonds, roots, and love.COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
Starred review from April 1, 2022
An entertaining memoir about a uniquely dysfunctional family. In her debut memoir, Bilton tells two remarkable stories. One is the chronicle of her wildly unconventional childhood as the daughter of a woman described by a friend, without much exaggeration, as "one of the great characters of the Western world." Growing up "in Beverly Hills in the 1950s in a high-society family--the prized granddaughter of a former governor of California...and the daughter of a prominent judge in Los Angeles," Debra Olson was many things: an Eastern spiritualist; an out lesbian in homophobic times; a master saleswoman, making and losing millions in pyramid schemes; a friend of many celebrities; Ross Perot's "civil rights coordinator"; and a hedonist and sometime addict who yearned "to overdose on everything, especially life." Though her daughters were by far the most important part of her life, the girls' childhoods were marked by instability and loss, with both their father, Jeffrey, and many other second "mothers" coming and going on a regular basis. Bilton's warts-and-all depiction is sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying, always grounded in extraordinary forgiveness and resilience. The second story is the tale of Donor 150, who was by far the most popular option for those purchasing sperm at the California Cryobank in Century City, recommended constantly by the nurses and the doctor who ran the place. In 2005, over a decade after his retirement from the sperm donation business, Jeffrey saw a headline on the front page of the New York Times: "HELLO, I'M YOUR SISTER. OUR FATHER IS DONOR 150." The author was a sophomore in college at the time, and it would be another two years before she became aware of the situation. By then, there were documentaries, magazine articles, a Facebook group, and ever more popular DNA testing. By that time, as she would soon learn, she was dating her own brother. A wholly absorbing page-turner that everyone will want to read. You should probably buy two.COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- popularity
- 1014
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/a928c45e-9cc6-4757-9129-5cae1dc318c6/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- a928c45e-9cc6-4757-9129-5cae1dc318c6
- starRating
- 3.9
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0017-1/{A928C45E-9CC6-4757-9129-5CAE1DC318C6}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Biography & Autobiography
- value: Family & Relationships
- value: Nonfiction
- publishDateText
- 07/12/2022
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780316536547
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
This riveting, nuanced memoir about unforgettable individuals thrown together by chance and DNA tells a story of nature, nurture, and coming to terms with one's true inheritance.
What is a “normal family,” and how do you go about making one? Chrysta Bilton’s magnetic, larger-than-life mother, Debra, yearned to have a child, but as a single gay woman in 1980s California, she had few options. Until one day, while getting her hair done in a Beverly Hills salon, she met a man and instantly knew he was the one she’d been looking for. Beautiful, athletic, artistic, and from a well-to-do family, Jeffrey Harrison appeared to be Debra’s ideal sperm donor.
A verbal agreement, a couple of thousand in cash, and a few squirts of a turkey baster later, and Chrysta was conceived. Over the years, Jeffrey would make regular appearances at the family home, which grew to include Chrysta’s baby sister. But how much did...
- sortTitle
- Normal Family On Truth Love and How I Met My 35 Siblings
- crossRefId
- 7677409
- subtitle
- On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings
- publisher
- Little, Brown and Company
- bisacCodes
- code: BIO022000
- description: Biography & Autobiography / Women
- code: BIO026000
- description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
- code: FAM006000
- description: Family & Relationships / Alternative Family
