Linda Carroll

Linda Carroll (born 1944) is the author of the 2006 book Her Mother's Daughter dealing with the relationships with her adoptive mother and daughter, singer Courtney Love. Both Linda, and her biological mother Paula Fox were raised as adopted children, giving frequent speculations to Courtney Love's ancestry.

Carroll's mother Paula was given up for adoption as an infant and was passed among various relatives and friends. Carroll was born while Paula was still a teenager. However, given the tumultuous relationship with her own biological parents, Paula gave the child up for adoption.

Carroll was adopted by an Italian-American couple at birth, retaining no contact with her birth father or her birth mother. Conflicting news stories began to appear in August 2003 regarding Courtney Love's family tree, some of them remarking that Carroll had taken DNA tests, and that the results proved that Carroll's father was actor Marlon Brando. The news reports implied this disclosure would appear in Carroll's then-forthcoming memoir. Later that month, however, a spokeswoman for Carroll's publisher, Doubleday, told the New York Daily News, "There was nothing in Linda Carroll's book proposal about Marlon Brando, nor will there be anything in the book about him. I've spoken to her and she has told me that there is no truth to the suggestion that she is related to Marlon Brando."

Carroll gave birth to Courtney Love in 1964. She soon broke up with her husband, and during a child custody case following the divorce, she and one of her friends presented letters to the court implying her husband had given Love, then three years old, LSD. Harrison denies this allegation and has passed polygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Carroll. Carroll then married and divorced three times, and temporarily settled in many hippie communes in Oregon. She left Love in the United States with a friend Shirley, who was a therapist, while she with her new husband and her half-sisters settled in New Zealand. Carroll's adoptive parents established a trust fund for Love.