Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books About Domestic U.S. Adoptions

  • The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious

    The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious

    by Lori Jakiela

    Her 70-year-old, cancer-stricken mother kills snakes with a broom. Her best friend believes in psychics and the Virgin Mary. Her new neighbor steals her CDs and her aunt sneaks cheese curls into the house. After seven years in New York, Lori Jakiela gives up her…

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  • The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

    The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

    by Kathryn Joyce

    Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of reproductive rights, pitched as a “win-win” compromise in the never-ending abortion debate. But as Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become even more entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. The Child…

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  • The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1958-1965

    The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1958-1965

    by Edward Albee

    Brings readers up to date with one of the most varied and brilliant periods in the career of a true American master playwright, including his most influential and iconoclastic plays to date. Adoptee Author: Edward Albee Publication Year: 2007 (1st edition) Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews: …

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  • The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1966-1977

    The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1966-1977

    by Edward Albee

    Brings readers up to date with one of the most varied and brilliant periods in the career of a true American master playwright, including his most influential and iconoclastic plays to date. Adoptee Author: Edward Albee Publication Year: 2008 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop…

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  • The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1978-2003

    The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1978-2003

    by Edward Albee

    Brings readers up to date with one of the most varied and brilliant periods in the career of a true American master playwright, including his most influential and iconoclastic plays to date. Adoptee Author: Edward Albee Publication Year: 2008 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop…

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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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  • The Fifth and Final Name: Memoir of an American Churchill

    The Fifth and Final Name: Memoir of an American Churchill

    by Rhonda Noonan

    In a family memoir that reads like a detective novel, Rhonda Noonan recounts her thirty-year quest to find the truth of her own background–and what she uncovered will surprise readers as much as it did her. Rhonda was born and adopted in Oklahoma, a state…

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  • The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me

    The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me

    by Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski

    The Foundling tells the incredible and inspiring true story of Paul Fronczak, a man who recently discovered via a DNA test that he was not who he thought he was—and set out to solve two fifty-year-old mysteries at once. Along the way he upturned the genealogy…

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  • The Freedom Bus

    The Freedom Bus

    by Jenny Rossiter

    This is the story of a brave little girl on a quest for adventure, love and belonging. Jenny Rossiter has spent decades encouraging others to improve their lives. In this book she peels back the layers of her own life in a bid to connect…

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  • The Gathering Place: An Adoptee’s Story

    The Gathering Place: An Adoptee’s Story

    by Emma Stevens

    When Emma learns her birth mother wrote and signed a letter about her to the adoption agency, she knew she had to have that letter if she were to ever discover her birth mother’s true identity. Her birth mother had used a fictitious name at…

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  • The Gift Best Given: A Memoir

    The Gift Best Given: A Memoir

    by Edward Di Gangi

    “Like a jigsaw puzzle, every story is made up of pieces; big ones, smaller ones, pieces not easily found, tiny and hiding, essential to complete the picture.” At almost seventy years old, Edward Di Gangi had never given much thought to the fact he was…

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  • The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

    The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

    by Shannon Gibney

    Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven from her true story of growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents…

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  • The Girl in the Mirror: A Novel in Poems and Journal Entries

    The Girl in the Mirror: A Novel in Poems and Journal Entries

    by Meg Kearney

    An adopted teen’s search for her birth mother is overshadowed by a wrenching loss, dramatically told through her poems and journals. Lizzie McLane, the adopted poet-heroine of the widely acclaimed The Secret of Me, is now a high school senior, excited about her future: meeting boys,…

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  • The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

    The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

    by Ann Fessler

    In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before…

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  • The Good Guy

    The Good Guy

    by Susan Beale

    Ted, a car-tyre salesman in 1960s suburban New England, is a dreamer who craves admiration. His wife, Abigail, longs for a life of the mind. Single-girl Penny just wants to be loved. When a chance encounter brings Ted and Penny together, he becomes enamoured and…

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  • The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption

    The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption

    by Elaine Pinkerton

    Anyone who was adopted or who has adopted a child will find The Goodbye Baby a comforting and inspiring read. It takes one on a journey through the thorny issues of adoption, a search for healing, and an inspiring finale. Adoptee Author: Elaine Pinkerton Publication Year: 2012…

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  • The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book

    The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book

    by Megan Culhane Galbraith

    Shortly before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, adoptee Megan Culhane Galbraith was born in a Catholic charity hospital in New York City to a teenaged resident of the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a home for unwed mothers. Decades later, on the eve of becoming a mother…

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  • The Harris Narratives: An Introspective Study of a Transracial Adoptee

    The Harris Narratives: An Introspective Study of a Transracial Adoptee

    by Susan Harris O’Connor

    This book consists of five autobiographical narratives by Susan Harris O’Connor, a social worker and transracial adoptee. These monologues were developed and performed around the United States in academic, clinical and child welfare settings to wide acclaim over the last sixteen years. They will be…

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  • The How and the Why

    The How and the Why

    by Cynthia Hand

    Cassandra McMurtrey has the best parents a girl could ask for; they’ve given Cass a life she wouldn’t trade for the world. She has everything she needs—but she has questions, too. Like, to know who she is. Where she came from. Questions her adoptive parents…

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  • The Killing Closet: A Memoir

    The Killing Closet: A Memoir

    by V. L. Brunskill

    In this heartbreaking story of family, struggle, hope, and forgiveness, V.L. Brunskill tells of her life as she grows up on Long Island, New York. Vicki-lynn and her brother Peter are adopted as infants into a family defined by violence. V.L. defends her mother and…

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  • The Last Invisible Continent: Essays on Adoption and Identity

    The Last Invisible Continent: Essays on Adoption and Identity

    by Michael Allen Potter

    These twelve essays span nearly twenty years of research and activism that chronicle one man’s search for his family. Together, they explore the concept of personal identity from the perspective of someone who was erased completely by adoption in The State of New York. Adoptee…

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  • The Last Year

    The Last Year

    by Amelia Banis

    Being adopted is one thing. Being adopted and navigating the complexities of having unexpected relationships with both biological parents is something quite different. Having two sets of parents can be an incredible gift, but it can also be unimaginably complicated and challenging. Its often filled…

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  • The Lies That Bind: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Rejection, Redirection, DNA, and Discovery

    The Lies That Bind: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Rejection, Redirection, DNA, and Discovery

    by Laureen Pittman

    Born in a California women’s prison in 1963, Laureen Pittman was relinquished for adoption. As a child, Laureen was conditioned to believe that being adopted didn’t matter. So, it didn’t . . . until it did. Through scraps of information, Laureen stitched together her history –…

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  • The Lonely Child: The Journey of Search to Find My Biological Family

    The Lonely Child: The Journey of Search to Find My Biological Family

    by Susan Moyer

    Growing up, Susan always felt something was missing in her life. Then, at age sixteen, her parents finally told her their Big Secret. Susan was adopted. With no information regarding her birth family, but with hope and determination, Susan ventured into the unknown to put together the pieces…

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  • The Lucky Daughter

    The Lucky Daughter

    by Mariama J. Lockington

    Poetry. “Mariama J. Lockington’s The Lucky Daughter digs deep into the physicality of moving through this world as a queer woman of color. These poems – about race, sexuality, families (found, formed, and inherited) – are brutal in their honesty and beauty. “a girl” Lockington…

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  • The Mistress’s Daughter

    The Mistress’s Daughter

    by A. M. Homes

    The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with a family of his own. The Mistress’s Daughter is the…

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  • The Mouse Room

    The Mouse Room

    by Susan Ito

    Susan Ito is a struggling college student, a young adult on the cusp of parental independence, when she meets her birth mother for the first time. Instead of launching into adulthood, she finds herself entangled in longing for this new kind of mother love where…

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  • The Mysteries of Eva Miller Revealed

    The Mysteries of Eva Miller Revealed

    by Eva D. Miller

    Former American Idol contestant Eva Miller takes you on an inspiring journey of both tragedy and triumph. Through her courage and faith Eva set out on a mission to unravel the mysteries that shrouded her life, she never knew what could possibly await her. Join…

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