About the Book
Belonging is not something Emily Brown inherited. It’s something she had to fight to understand.
In Momentum, Emily traces her life through the fault lines of her parents' divorce, silence, and long-buried family secrets, beginning in Beverly Hills and stretching across continents to Canada, where she ultimately builds a life of her own.
The story opens at her Uncle Bib’s memorial. Standing in that room of memory and grief, Emily is pulled backward into a childhood shaped by fracture, unspoken tensions, and emotional wounds that quietly followed her into adulthood.
What unfolds is not a linear autobiography, but a reckoning.
An eight-year immersion in a San Francisco feminist activist organization. A formative year in Hungary on the brink of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Motherhood. Migration. Reinvention. Each chapter of Emily’s life becomes part of a deeper search, not just for independence, but for truth.
As she confronts family expectations and uncovers hidden histories, Emily discovers that healing isn’t about solving the past. It’s about learning how to carry it without being defined by it.
Momentum is a reflective, unsparing memoir about identity, inheritance, and the quiet courage required to rewrite your own story.
"A luminous, courageous memoir of belonging, resilience, and deeply transformative self-discovery," The International Review of Books.