Out of the Box

As a newscaster for the Univision Television Network, the most watched Spanish-language station in the United States, María Elena Salinas has covered some of the biggest stories of our time. She's not one to back down from a challenge: "I faced off with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and John Kerry. I asked Panama's Manuel Noriega about drug smuggling, Chile's Augusto Pinochet about human-rights violations, and Peru's Alberto Fujimori about corruption." She volunteered to go to Baghdad to cover the war in Iraq. But for I Am My Father's Daughter: Living a Life Without Secrets (Rayo, $19.95), co-written with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Liz Balmaseda, she took on "the most daunting story of my life" -- her own family's history. 

Shortly after the death of her father, Salinas received a package he had stored for years in the warehouse of an old family friend. It was "jammed with personal documents, scraps of our lives: birth and baptismal certificates, report cards, family photographs, official letters, paycheck stubs, rent receipts" and evidence that before she was born her father had been a pacifist without a green card and, to her shock, a Catholic priest. Following the clues in the "Box of Secrets," Salinas delves into her father's fascinating past. Along the way she also comes to understand better her relationships with her own children, and proves herself to be as irrepressible on the page as she is on the air.

Shortly after the death of her father, Salinas received a package he had stored for years in the warehouse of an old family friend. It was "jammed with personal documents, scraps of our lives: birth and baptismal certificates, report cards, family photographs, official letters, paycheck stubs, rent receipts" and evidence that before she was born her father had been a pacifist without a green card and, to her shock, a Catholic priest. Following the clues in the "Box of Secrets," Salinas delves into her father's fascinating past. Along the way she also comes to understand better her relationships with her own children, and proves herself to be as irrepressible on the page as she is on the air. ·

Andrew Ervin is a regular contributor to Book World.