Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Category: Search/Reunion

  • The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream

    The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream

    by Katharine Norbury

    Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent. Raised by loving adoptive parents, she grew into a wanderer, drawn by the landscape of the British countryside. One summer, following the miscarriage of a much-longed-for child, Katharine sets out – accompanied by her…

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  • Worthy To Be Found

    Worthy To Be Found

    by Deanna Doss Shrodes

    Worthy To Be Found chronicles the joys and obstacles of a Christian adoptee relinquished at birth in the 1960s American South. Deanna was called by God from a young age. Driven to serve, and gifted in music and preaching, she excelled in her calling. Coming from…

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  • Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Edited by Laura Dennis

    This anthology gives voice to the wide experiences of adoptees and those who love them; examining the emotional, psychological and logistical effects of adoption reunion. Primarily adult adoptee voices, we also hear from adoptive parents, first moms and mental health professionals, all weighing in on…

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  • Mother Me: An Adopted Woman’s Journey to Motherhood

    Mother Me: An Adopted Woman’s Journey to Motherhood

    by Zara H. Phillips

    The adopted daughter of loving parents, Zara Phillips nonetheless felt out of place in her family and a misfit in the world around her. Although cherished by a well-meaning mother and father, she grew up feeling deeply insecure and alone, consumed by a void she found…

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  • One Small Sacrifice: A Memoir (Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects)

    One Small Sacrifice: A Memoir (Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects)

    by Trace A. DeMeyer

    Award-winning Native American journalist Trace A. DeMeyer has published her updated memoir One Small Sacrifice: A Memoir (Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects), an exposé on generations of American Indian children adopted by non-Indian families. Known for her exceptional print interviews with famous Native…

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  • Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found

    Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found

    by Sarah Saffian

    Adopted as an infant twenty-three years before, living happily in New York, Sarah had been “found” by her biological parents despite her reluctance to embrace them. In this searing, lyrical memoir, Sarah chronicles her painful journey from confusion and anger to acceptance and, finally, reunion–but not…

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  • Becoming Patrick: A Memoir

    Becoming Patrick: A Memoir

    by Patrick McMahon

    When Pat McMahon risks the love of the mother who raised him by seeking out the mother who gave him away, he transforms from a mild-mannered engineer into a frenetic detective. After he overcomes the challenges of existential angst, bureaucratic roadblocks, and unemployment, the phone…

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  • Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers

    Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers

    by Kate St. Vincent Vogl

    She swore she would never let her birthmother into her life, but then her mom died of ovarian cancer and her birthmother found her through the obituary. Hard to argue with fate. Harder still to let go of childhood promises. This memoir explores what it…

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  • Assembling Self

    Assembling Self

    by Karen Belanger

    Born and adopted in 1959, at the age of two weeks, Karen had an inherent yearning her whole life to find more out about her biological background. Plagued by what seemed to be genetic health problems and illness the need for current family medical history…

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  • Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

    Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

    by Jeanette Winterson

    A memoir about a life’s work to find happiness. It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she’d written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother.…

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  • Beneath a Tall Tree

    Beneath a Tall Tree

    by Jean Strauss

    Bestselling author Jean Strauss’s memoir about her quest to unearth her past is an incredibly funny and touching journey that redefines the meaning of family and celebrates the universal connections that link us all. Adoptee Author: Jean Strauss Publication Year: 2001 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews: …

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  • The Language of Blood

    The Language of Blood

    by Jane Jeong Trenka

    With inventive and radiant prose that includes real and imagined letters, a fairy tale, a one-act play, crossword puzzles, and child-welfare manuals, Trenka recounts a childhood of insecurity, a battle with a stalker that escalates to a plot for her murder, and an extraordinary trip…

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  • Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter (reissue)

    Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter (reissue)

    by Betty Jean Lifton

    In this significant and lasting account, Betty Jean Lifton, acclaimed author of several books on the psychology of the adopted, tells her own story of growing up at a time when adoptees were still in the closet. Twice Born recounts her early struggle with the…

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  • Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (3rd edition)

    Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (3rd edition)

    by Betty Jean Lifton

    The first edition of Betty Jean Lifton’s Lost and Found advanced the adoption rights movement in this country in 1979, challenging many states’ policies of maintaining closed birth records. For nearly three decades the book has topped recommended reading lists for those who seek to…

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  • The Adoption Triangle (reissue)

    The Adoption Triangle (reissue)

    by Arthur D. Sorosky, M.D., Annette Baran, M.S.W., and Reuben Pannor, M.S.W.

    A classic and the first to deal with how sealed and open records affect adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents. Originally published in 1978,” … it is as true and open as the changes advocated … comprehensive, factual, forward looking, totally honest, readable and thoughtful…

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  • The Declassified Adoptee: Essays of an Adoption Activist

    The Declassified Adoptee: Essays of an Adoption Activist

    by Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston; edited by Julie Stromberg

    Throughout this book, readers bear witness to key moments in the unfolding of an adoptee from a quiet, contemplative young woman to an outspoken advocate for the rights of adoptees and their loved ones. By addressing adoption through brief essays, the book provides an avenue through…

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  • Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption from a Place of Empowerment & Peace

    Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption from a Place of Empowerment & Peace

    Edited by Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston, Julie Stromberg, Karen Pickell, and Jennifer Anastasi

    A collection of writings by the authors of the Lost Daughters blog. The Lost Daughters mission is to bring readers the perspectives and narratives of adopted women, and to highlight their strength, resiliency, and wisdom. Editors: Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston, Julie Stromberg, Karen Pickell, Jennifer Anastasi Adoptee Authors: Jennifer…

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  • Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype

    Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype

    Edited by Diane René Christian and Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston

    A collection of stories, poems, and essays aimed at confronting the “perpetual child” stereotype faced by adult adoptees. The pieces contained within this anthology implore readers to look deeply into their own ideas about what it means to be adopted and to empathize with the…

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  • Adopted Reality

    Adopted Reality

    by Laura Dennis

    Caught in a paranoid delusion that she’s a bionic spy responsible for 9/11, adoptee Laura Dennis must fight her perfectionist, self-destructive tendencies to regain her sanity. Adoptee Author: Laura Dennis Publication Year: 2012 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop and Amazon links on this site…

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  • Adopted Like Me: Chosen to Search for Truth, Identity, and a Birthmother

    Adopted Like Me: Chosen to Search for Truth, Identity, and a Birthmother

    by Michael C. Watson

    As a child, Michael Watson asked, “Who is my mother?” The following twenty years he asked, “Who am I?” While narrating his quest to find the missing link to his past, Watson discovers that life’s obstacles are also direct sources for human potential, and that…

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  • A Wealth of Family: An Adopted Son’s International Quest for Heritage, Reunion, and Enrichment

    A Wealth of Family: An Adopted Son’s International Quest for Heritage, Reunion, and Enrichment

    by Thomas Brooks

    Brooks grew up as the only child of a struggling single mother in inner-city Pittsburgh. He was battling racial stereotypes at school and searching for a place among his peers. Then he was told at age eleven that he was adopted. Brooks had actually been…

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  • A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots

    A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots

    by Katy Robinson

    At seven years old, Katy Robinson is adopted by a Salt Lake City, Utah, couple. Twenty years later, she returns to Seoul, Korea, to reconnect with her birth family and finds herself an outsider in her native country. Adoptee Author: Katy Robinson Publication Year: 2002 Critical Reviews…

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  • A Princess Found: An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter Who Connected Them All

    A Princess Found: An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter Who Connected Them All

    by Sarah Culberson and Tracy Trivas

    A biracial adoptee from West Virginia searches for her birth parents and discovers that her father is the chief of a Mende tribe in Sierra Leone. Her memoir is paralleled with the story of her father, recreated by a coauthor. Adoptee Author: Sarah Culberson Author: Tracy Trivas…

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  • A Man and His Mother: An Adopted Son’s Search

    A Man and His Mother: An Adopted Son’s Search

    by Tim Green

    From Tim’s life as a gangly youngster to competing in the grueling National Football League to having children of his own, this is an impassioned exploration of the special relationship between and a man and his mother, and how deeply this relationship affects everything we…

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