This is one odd tale.

If you are expecting a definitive autobiography of the comedian who has become a comfortable presence in American households as she neared the end of her successful six-year run on TV, think again. We know Rosie O’Donnell best from her bright and breezy celebrity interviews, her crush on Tom Cruise, her adoration of Barbra Streisand and her love of Broadway.

But what has struck a chord with Americans are the revelations of her own life. Regular viewers know her mother died of breast cancer when O’Donnell was 10. Her father was distant. She has adopted three children and set up a foundation to aid all kinds of worthy causes that benefit kids.

She finally answered the question she never talks about on her own show by coming out as a lesbian on national television in an interview with Diane Sawyer, during a show that largely centered on two gay men in Florida who are trying to adopt a foster child they nursed through birth-related HIV. And recently, gossip columns announced O’Donnell’s life partner, Kelli Carpenter, is pregnant.

So “Find Me” is another piece in a series of O’Donnell updates.

This is the story of the star’s involvement with a voice at the other end of the phone. At first it seemed that the mother of a pregnant teen-ager raped by her youth minister was looking for help. (O’Donnell works with a nonprofit adoption agency in New Jersey.)

But in this case she became personally involved, and in doing so called up demons in her life.

As she tells the tale of the girl, Stacie, and her mother, O’Donnell interweaves stories of her own life. Most of it has been covered in daily monologues on her TV show. But in this book, written in journal style, O’Donnell reveals she is still at war with herself. Her daily battles with her weight, her problems with her self-image and her retreat into differing parts of her personality (the wholesome talk show Rosie vs. the private Rosie who discloses she was abused as a child) present a vulnerability we rarely see.

The Stacie story turns out to be a detective job for O’Donnell, but the subject she thought she was following a scared, pregnant teen is a red herring.

The real subject in this search is Rosie O’Donnell herself.