Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books About Adoptees

  • 20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make

    20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make

    by Sherrie Eldridge

    As an adoptee, do you have mixed feelings about your adoption? If you do, you are not alone – adoptees often experience complex feelings of grief, anger, and questions about their identity. Sherrie Eldridge is an adoptee and adoption expert, and in this book she…

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  • 45 Days of Pushing Through: A Guided Journal

    45 Days of Pushing Through: A Guided Journal

    by Melissa A. Corrigan

    Are you ready for a change? Like really ready? Have you battled low self-esteem, poor internal dialogue, remnants of a traumatic childhood, abusive relationship, or simply feeling a bit… lost? You have the key to unlocking a better you… right inside yourself. In your heart, your mind,…

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  • A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    by Lesley Wells

    Lesley was one of six children whose mother gave them all away. Fostered then adopted by people who were simply not fit for purpose she experienced a lot of pain and cruelty in her childhood, but also found a lot of joy in the most…

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  • A Family Apart: Sleuthing the Mysteries of Abandonment, Adoption and DNA

    A Family Apart: Sleuthing the Mysteries of Abandonment, Adoption and DNA

    by Craig A. Steffen

    A Family Apart: Sleuthing the Mysteries of Abandonment, Adoption and DNA is a fascinating ride into the methodical quest of an orphan to uncover the truth about his origins. Even more, this book delves into the questions that come from being uncertain about the realities…

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  • A Family from Barra: An Adoption Story

    A Family from Barra: An Adoption Story

    by Beryl Martin

    Beryl Martin grew up as Pat Ridge, daughter of Nellie and George. George worked at the Municipal Milk Department; Nellie fostered children, to whom she was mostly cruel. Roaming Wellington as a child and schoolgirl, Pat started work at the Zig Zag factory at 14;…

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  • A Fire Is Coming

    A Fire Is Coming

    by Emma Stevens

    The true story of when Emma Stevens learned her new next-door neighbor was a psychologist, she innocently asked about how to find a therapist for her own issues. Dr. Carol Brenner decided to accept her as a patient. Against a backdrop of the Laguna Beach…

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  • A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

    A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

    Edited by Susan Ito and Tina Cervin

    Sixty short stories and poems reveal the sometimes heartbreaking, often affirming tales of adoption. Written from the point of view of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, this unique anthology spans nations and cultures. Editors: Susan Ito, Tina Cervin Adoptee Authors: Mi Ok Song Bruining, Lisa Buchanan,…

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  • A Girl Named Connie

    A Girl Named Connie

    by Carol Perkins with Connie Wilson

    In 1946, being adopted was a social curse and a lifelong sentence. I was born that year, but not to prosperous business owners, Bill and Cloteel Wilson as I had thought. When I was six weeks old, they brought me to their rural Kentucky town,…

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  • A Law of Blood-ties: The “Right” to Access Genetic Ancestry

    A Law of Blood-ties: The “Right” to Access Genetic Ancestry

    by Alice Diver

    This text collates and examines the jurisprudence that currently exists in respect of blood-tied genetic connection, arguing that the right to identity often rests upon the ability to identify biological ancestors, which in turn requires an absence of adult-centric veto norms. It looks firstly to…

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  • A Legitimate Life: A Forbidden Journey of Self-Discovery

    A Legitimate Life: A Forbidden Journey of Self-Discovery

    by Melinda A. Warshaw

    Adopted into an affluent and aristocratic family, Melinda A. Warshaw had everything a little girl could want—the best clothes, the best toys, horse riding lessons, anything else her heart desired. But what she didn’t have was answers. Why was she so different from the people…

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  • A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    by Nicole Chung

    Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she’d long wanted.…

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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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  • A Moment in Time

    A Moment in Time

    by A J Bialo

    Imagine, if you can, if you could trace your beginnings to a specific moment in time. If that specific moment had never happened, your existence–and everything and everybody you have influenced–would never have happened. This is the focus of the title poem in A Moment…

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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 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 Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law

    A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law

    by Darryl Nelson

    A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law traces Australian laws affecting thousands, back to the US theories of eugenics, then back to Britain. It highlights the various notions of ‘the best interests of the child’ in law, over time, and shows how the poor…

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  • A Twenty Year Journey: An Adoptee’s Search for Answers

    A Twenty Year Journey: An Adoptee’s Search for Answers

    by Cathryn B. Stanley

    Secrets, sacrifice, lies, love, abandonment, acceptance, grief, joy, regret, jubilation, and fortitude are nestled within the pages of A Twenty-Year Journey. Join me as I share the twists and turns of my pilgrimage with you. Incredibly my circle of existence is quite small, yet the…

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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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  • Accidental Sisters: The Story of My 52-Year Wait to Meet My Biological Sibling

    Accidental Sisters: The Story of My 52-Year Wait to Meet My Biological Sibling

    by Katherine Linn Caire

    Relinquished at birth to Catholic Charities in 1959, Kathe Linn Caire adores her adoptive family and has never considered searching for her birth parents. At age fifty-two, though, a sudden pull to learn more about her medical history sends her on an unexpected journey. Kathe…

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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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  • Adopted Out: A Memoir of Closed Adoption and Blackness

    Adopted Out: A Memoir of Closed Adoption and Blackness

    by S.M. Ezeff

    While searching for her birth family, S.M. Ezeff discovered there was a shortage of African American adoptees speaking out and came to realize that agency-based adoption is still taboo within the African American community. Constantly being asked if her adoptive parents were Black, she learned…

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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: An Adoptee’s Memoir of Healing Love

    Adopted: An Adoptee’s Memoir of Healing Love

    by David C. Alves

    Adopted touches on the issues nearly every child or adult adoptee must face on the way to maturity, wholeness, and redemption. Along the way my personal narrative provides valuable insights to adoptive and foster parents who long to see their children whole. And to adult adoptees…

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  • Adoptee: A Childhood of Torment

    Adoptee: A Childhood of Torment

    by Joseph M. Sabol

    The true story of an adopted child, abused, beaten, taunted, and humiliated. This book reveals a very different side of the Catholic Ursuline Order of Sisters and of one of the largest Catholic churches in the Cleveland Diocese, St. Charles Catholic Church, during the 1960s.…

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  • Adoptees Come of Age: Living within Two Families

    Adoptees Come of Age: Living within Two Families

    by Ronald J. Nydam

    Ronald Nydam acquaints the pastoral counselor with some of the struggles that adopted people confront in their development and in their adult lives. Drawn from the compelling stories of people who have been adopted, this book provides an intelligent and accessible description of the distinct…

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  • Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    by Beth Syverson and Joseph Nakao; foreword by Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao

    This book is a wake-up call to those impacted by adoption and to those who interact with them. According to preliminary results of a groundbreaking study out of Winston-Salem State University (final report targeted for release in 2025), adopted people are 36.7 times more likely…

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  • Adoption Deception: A Personal and Professional Journey

    Adoption Deception: A Personal and Professional Journey

    by Penny Mackieson

    Have you ever wondered how it might feel to have been adopted in Australia during the pre-1980s era in which vulnerable young mothers were coerced into relinquishing their babies? How it might feel to have grown up, become a social worker and worked with vulnerable…

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  • Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood

    Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood

    by Kimberly D. McKee

    In Adoption Fantasies, Kimberly D. McKee explores the ways adopted Asian women and girls are situated at a nexus of objectifications—as adoptees and as Asian American women—and how they negotiate competing expectations based on sensationalist and fictional portrayals of adoption found in US popular culture. McKee…

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