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Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama
by Marianne Novy
Explores the ways in which novels and plays portray adoption, probing the cultural fictions that these literary representations have perpetuated. Through careful readings of works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Barbara Kingsolver, Edward Albee and others, Marianne Novy reveals how fiction has contributed…
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Recycled: A Reluctant Search for True Self Through Nurture, Nature, and Free Will
by Jack F. Rocco MD
Jack Rocco was a baby when he was adopted by a blue-collar, Italian American family. Today a successful orthopedic surgeon, Jack’s identity was built around his Italian heritage and while he knew the story of his “Gotday,” he didn’t know the story of his birth…
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Red Dust Road
by Jackie Kay
From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red…
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Remedies
by Patricia Cotter-Busbee
Remedies is a deeply original autobiographical fiction that chronicles the lives of five generations of women. It is beautifully layered and brought to life through image-driven vignettes that have been paired down into razor-sharp scenes. The stories convey tragedy and comedy in equal portions. Wombs…
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Reprieve
by James Han Mattson
On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe…
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Requitements
by Rosemary Starace
Poems and an essay. Adoptee Author: Rosemary Starace Publication Year: 2015 (revised edition; originally published 2010) Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon links on this site are affiliate links. We earn a small commission to help keep Adoptee Reading running whenever items are…
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Restored: Pursuing Wholeness When a Relationship Is Broken
by Deanna Doss Shrodes
Have your hopes been dashed into pieces when you tried to make a relationship work and the other person didn’t respond as you wished? Have you asked someone to forgive you, but he or she didn’t respond as you desired? Have you prayed for healing…
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Reunions in Spring: Meditations for a Holiday Table–Adoption Search & Families
by Suzanne Gilbert
Reunions in Spring: Meditations for a Holiday Table–Adoption Search & Families is based on civilization’s oldest adoption memoir: the book of Exodus. It enjoys a lively retelling every spring through the literary genre of the “haggadah” used exclusively to retell the stories of Moses, his…
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Reunited: An Investigative Genealogist Unlocks Some of Life’s Greatest Family Mysteries
by Pamela Slaton (with Samantha Marshall)
In this poignant and heartwarming narrative, renowned genealogist Pamela Slaton tells the most striking stories from her incredibly successful career of reconnecting adoptees with long-lost birth parents. After a traumatic reunion with her own birth mother, Pamela Slaton realized two things: That she wanted to…
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Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story
by Mary Cardaras
“With searing detail and lean, crisp prose, in Ripped at the Root Mary Cardaras tells the story of Dena Polites, a woman born to a young unwed Greek couple who was adopted by married Greek Americans in Ohio. Polites’s tale serves as a focal point…
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Road to Belonging: Establishing a Legacy of Love After Closed Adoption
by Lynne Leppard
Each person has their own unique story, and as Lynne Leppard’s early life included foster care and adoption, she often found herself wondering about her origins and heritage. Her loyalty to her adoptive family was real, but so too was her longing to find out…
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Rooted in Adoption Journal: Adoptee Writing Prompts for Self-Reflection, Discovery, and Healing
by Veronica Breaux
This journal consists of over 50 writing prompts specially created for adoptees. The journal is divided into seven sections: Love and Relationships, Childhood Memories, Difficult Emotions, Listen to Adoptees, Adoption and the Media, Search and Reunion, and Personal Growth. Writing is a powerful way to…
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Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections
by Veronica Breaux and Shelby Kilgore
Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections is a collection of short narratives from those who have been adopted. Adoptees of various ages, backgrounds, and experiences were asked discuss the joys of adoption and the struggles of living a life of secrecy and lost…
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Rose’s Locket
by Shannon Quist
Adopted teenager Izzie grew up with an incomplete story about her past. That is, until her eighteenth birthday, when her parents reveal a set of documents that give Izzie more answers about her origin than she had ever anticipated. Intent on discovering who her birthmother…
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Sanctuaries
by Vince Sgambati
Gianni, a gay adoptee, comes of age in a time when adoption and same-sex love are not easily discussed or accepted. Sanctuaries is a tender story of love and healing, set against the larger turmoil of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, and the…
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Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go
by Laurie James
Laurie James spent most of her life wondering what it means to belong; loneliness dictated the choices she made. She rarely shared this secret with others, however; it was always hidden behind a carefree and can-do attitude. When she’s in her mid-forties, Laurie’s mother has…
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Santa Fe Blogger: Life After Adoption Recovery
by Elaine Pinkerton
Santa Fe Blogger traces an adoptee’s journey to wholeness and authenticity. One blog post at a time, author and blogger Elaine Pinkerton comes to grips with the lack of a family tree and the need to “adopt” who one really is. In 48 blog posts,…
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Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting
by Mary Gauthier
Mary Gauthier was twelve years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny’s old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines…
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Saving Grace: A Story of Adoption
by L.B. Johnson
It started with a piece of paper–a birth certificate, sent to the author’s parents long after her birth. There is much history in that piece of paper. For she was born to an unwed mother in the generation prior to Roe v. Wade, on a…
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Scoop Baby: . . . It Is Time
by H.T. Sawyer
They said her baby died… Baby Scoop Era: Once upon a time, unwed mothers were trained to care for their babies, largely by Christian women. In the 1940’s, however, maternity wards began to gain favor, as did the idea of relinquishing babies to well-meaning strangers.…
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Searching for Enda
by Paul G. Denny
Everyone has a story to tell. Some are of heartbreak, some of loss, some of passion. In Searching for Enda, a brave man asking questions about his adoption in Britain leads him to discover buried secrets swept under a conservative carpet of shame. We all…
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Searching For Me: An Adoptee’s Journey of Faith, Family, and Belonging
by Scott Sullivan
Being given away for adoption just days after being born left a mystery around Scott Sullivan’s life that tugged at his analytical mind, fueling a sense of self-doubt throughout his introverted life that affected his friendships, his faith, and amplified his insecurities. Hoping to uncover…
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Searching for Mom: A Memoir
by Sara Easterly (with Linda Easterly)
Searching for Mom is a “disarmingly honest” mother-daughter story. Sara Easterly spent a lifetime looking for the perfect mother. As an adoptee she had difficulties attaching to her mother, struggled with her faith, lived the effects of intergenerational wounding, and felt an inherent sense of being…
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Searching for the Castle: Backtrail of an Adoption
by Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom
Like cowboys turning in the saddle to look at where they came from, Searching for the Castle documents the backtrail of author Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom’s adoption. It begins with her urgency as an eighteen-year-old woman initiating her search for her birth parents. Her recollection includes…
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Season of Dares
by Leah Silvieus
Season of Dares leans into fragments of the scriptures, narratives and mythologies of a Korean adoptee’s childhood in the rural American West. Fearlessly, it revisits and explores the physical and spiritual landscapes of those communities and the tensions between the impulses that shaped them–violence and…
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Second Choices: A Story of Belonging and Finding Home
by June Wright
Elise, an adoptee, had always felt like a second choice. When she fell in love with and married Evan, she believed she was finally someone’s first choice. She longed for a place to feel validated, loved, and, most importantly, fit in. But Evan had demons…
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Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs: Unravelling mysterious family connections behind a secret adoption
by Jane Eales
A simple need for her birth certificate leads Jane, aged 19, to a devastating secret: she is adopted. Stunned, Jane is sworn to secrecy and forbidden to search for her biological family – a promise she honours until the death of her adoptive parents. A…
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See No Color
by Shannon Gibney
Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl adopted by a white family didn’t used to bother Alex much. She was a stellar baseball player, just like her father—her baseball coach and a former pro athlete. All Alex wanted was to play ball forever. But after…
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