The following was posted as a staff report on TheAdvocate.com on June 30, 2023, and printed in the Sunday, July 2, edition of The Advocate.

Mysteries solved: Baton Rouge’s Jeremy White recounts wife’s search for new family

When it came to inspiration for his debut book, Baton Rouge author Jeremy White found it in wife Edie White’s search for her biological family.

The result, “The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery,” was released Saturday.

The self-published work tracks the couple’s multi-directional adventure once Edie White, through AncestryDNA, learns that her father’s name is John Hart. Edie White, who was raised by a loving adopted family, in turn, discovers another new family and reaches out.

What unfolds in “The Little Girl” is “how the bombshell propels the two college sweethearts into this beautifully epic, transformational adventure that resolves a trio of daunting mysteries, including one plaguing an enthusiastic horde of gangster-adjacent Ukrainian Americans for two-thirds of a century,” according to a news release.

Also intriguing is that John Hart was a pacifist cited in two books for challenging David Duke at LSU with a bloody knife.

The chapters detail the couple’s trips to Seattle, Austin, Chicago, and California wine country to meet her far-flung new family.

“Some … see her as a wonderful expansion of their incredibly loving families. Others see her as a bona fide miracle. And at least one person considers Edie the answer to a long-secret prayer that she didn’t expect to receive until the afterlife,” the release also says.

The book is filled with happy reunions, including one involving a local bookstore, that the author describes as mind-blowing.

“Edie’s selfless agenda is the heart of this powerful story of healing, and sets it apart from other works about similar searches,” according to the release. “Our reluctant hero successfully dodges all the traps that could have turned this unicorn of a real-life family saga into a darker version of the insane yet heartwarming tale that it is.”

The 468-page hardcover book is available at LittleGirlBook.com or at Cavalier House Books, Denham Springs.