“There are two things parents should give their children—roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them.”
-Hodding S. Carter
Coming February 2026 from Gatekeeper Press!
No Finer Place
a memoir of DNA, deception, and duality
by Michelle Tullier
All her life, Michelle has gotten things done. Built a career. Raised a child. Planned the trips, wrote the thank-you notes, labeled the leftovers. So when DNA test results rock the foundation of her very being, Michelle treats this seismic life shift as just another project to manage, believing she can fool herself and others that she’s not falling apart.
She sets off from Maine to Atlanta, the Lowcountry, and Louisiana’s bayous and Bible Belt, tracing her parents’ coming of age against a backdrop of the Great Depression, World War II, racial segregation, and homophobia. She expects answers to unfurl like Spanish moss off a live oak or float to the surface of a Sazerac but instead finds she’s searching for all the wrong things in all the wrong places.
No Finer Place explores the universal longing to belong and our capacity to grow whole after life nearly breaks us.
