Split the Baby
A Memoir in Pieces
In honest and captivating prose, Split the Baby chronicles the toll of divorce and family rupture from the perspective of a child who was nearly torn in two. Lauren Rhoades retells her experience of growing up caught between two homes run by equally strong women: a fervently Catholic stepmother and a deeply sensitive Jewish mother. Pulled toward radically distinct family cultures with rich but conflicting religious traditions, the young girl struggles to reconcile her stepmother's possessive charm with her mother's fierce and vulnerable love. Working with a trove of salvaged documents—including psychological evaluations, legal records, and personal family diaries—Rhoades searches for answers to questions of identity, spirituality, and the relationships that most deeply shape us. Ultimately, this debut memoir-in-pieces is a thoughtful story of learning to become whole again.
Coming June 3, 2025
Praise for Split the Baby
“As children, none of us are a match for the world—make that the adults—around us. Lauren Rhoades delivers a clear lyrical account of that truth set in Nineties-era Denver suburbia. Bat-mitzvahed and then recast Catholic, she grew up a girl-sized, court-monitored rope in the post-divorce tug-of-war between her mother and father and stepmother. Due to Rhoades’s sharp little eyes then and ample wisdom now, Split the Baby is engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating, and wry. This memoir makes the reader wonder how any of us arrive to adulthood in one piece. Rhoades can’t say we do. All that’s left is to behold our used parts and the ways they shape our lives and loves ever after. My heart grew a bit before Rhoades was through with me.”
— Ellen Ann Fentress, author of The Steps We Take: A Memoir of Southern Reckoning
“There is a circularity to Split the Baby as Rhoades explores the threads of a childhood bifurcated by divorce. In beautifully frank prose, she navigates her two homes and the two women she loved: the pain of a mother, a stepmother in competition. Split the Baby is an ethically generous memoir, told with compassion and grace, in which Rhoades shows us what it feels like to inhabit a body divided.”
— Mary Miller, author of Biloxi and Always Happy Hour
“Startlingly beautiful prose, effortlessly rendered, and never pretentious, Split the Baby is the most evocative and moving memoir I've ever read about childhood, marriage, and divorce. I cannot imagine a more therapeutic book for disintegrating families to read together. Lauren Rhoades has written a unique classic that will bring great solace to kids caught between bedrooms that often reflect the needs of the parent more than the child. Read this book and you will be giving it away as a gift forever.”
— Lee Durkee, author of Stalking Shakespeare and
The Last Taxi Driver
Available for Pre-Order
Pre-order from Lemuria Books for a signed copy of the book plus an exclusive micro-chapbook with Lauren’s essay “At the Synagogue in the Heart of the Delta.”
2025 Events
June 10
Reading & Signing at Pass Christian Books
Pass Christian, MS
June 11
McMullan Young Writers’ Workshop
Jackson, MS
September 13
Mississippi Book Festival
Jackson, MS
June 23
Southern & Jewish Conference
Jackson, MS