When your church becomes the scene of the crime, how do you move forward with forgiveness and love in your heart? When the bell tolls for your pastor and your church family, where do you get the strength to say farewell? On June 17, 2015, a young white supremacist walked through a side entrance of Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine people.

In A Child of the Mother , author Evelyn Rose Sinkler, a longtime parishioner, tells how the history of hatred of blacks in America once again reared its ugly head, and she discusses how members of that church were thrust into unimaginable days of grief. She reveals her journey of mourning and chronicles the days of the funerals as an usher at some of the funerals. Sinkler shares the emotional roller coaster the church family experienced as they memorialized the lives of their pastor and friends.

Through heartfelt words, journal entries, and poems, this memoir offers a testament of the love and respect Sinkler holds for the nine lives lost and the survivors of June 17, 2015. It also provides a testament that family and a church family built on a foundation of love can lift one up during the darkest hours.