Category: Domestic US
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Taking Down the Wall
by Christine Murphy
To find a solution, a person must first admit there is a problem. Taking Down the Wall is a chronicle of one woman’s journey to the painful and reluctant admission that there is indeed a problem, her refusal to let an old wound heal. The…
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Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World
by Catherine E. McKinley
Brimming with rich, electrifying tales of the precious dye and its ancient heritage, Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan; Jewish “rag traders”; a Massachusetts textile factory owner; and…
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The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts
by Catherine E. McKinley
Catherine McKinley was one of only a few thousand African American and bi-racial children adopted by white couples in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Raised in a small, white New England town, she had a persistent longing for the more diverse community that would…
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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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Waving Backwards
by V.L. Brunskill
Imagine not knowing who you are, until you find yourself in a statue 800 miles from home. Join intensely passionate and fiercely independent New York college student Lara Bonavito on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery in sigh-worthy Savannah, Georgia. Adopted into an abusive and impoverished…
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The Syrian Jewelry Box: A Daughter’s Journey for Truth
by Carina Sue Burns
Carina Rourke is a young American growing up in blissful innocence in the Middle East until at age fifteen she is captivated by an obsessive desire to search inside of her mother’s forbidden jewelry box. Carina discovers a shocking family secret. On the heels of her discovery,…
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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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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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Parenting As Adoptees
Edited by Adam Chau and Kevin Ost-Vollmers
Through fourteen chapters, the authors of Parenting As Adoptees give readers a glimpse into a pivotal phase in life that touches the experiences of many domestic and international adoptees–that of parenting. The authors, who are all adoptees from various walks of life, intertwine their personal…
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Bastards: A Memoir
by Mary Anna King
In the early 1980s, Mary Hall is a little girl growing up in poverty in Camden, New Jersey, with her older brother Jacob and parents who, in her words, were “great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them.” After her…
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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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She Named You Donna
by Julie Kerton
It’s a January morning in 1976; Julie rips the hospital bracelet from her wrist and throws it across the room. As it lands, she doesn’t know that the sound will echo through the years. But the story doesn’t begin here. In a suburb north of…
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Braverman (previously titled I Almost Fell Off the Top of the Empire State Building: A True Story of Trauma and Survival
by Joe Soll with Susan Hawvermale
From lying on a New Jersey highway with cars speeding by his head in both directions, to being shot in the head by a manic sniper and almost falling to his death from the top of the Empire State Building, Joe Soll’s autobiography details these…
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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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Shadows of a Dark-Alley Adoptee: An Adoptee’s Search for Self
by Wendy Barkett
A book of thoughts and poems from an adoptee who attempts to find the truth which is masked by lies. Her lonely travels through a world that feels dark. At times she finds a friend to ride along in this journey called life. Adoptee Author: Wendy…
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The Tangled Red Thread
by Elle Cuardaigh
Born into the social experiment of closed adoption in the early 1960s, Noelle was taken home directly from the hospital at the age of three days. Her early life in rural Washington state seemed idyllic. With loving parents, two brothers, and her beloved pets, she…
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In Their Siblings’ Voices: White Non-Adopted Siblings Talk About Their Experiences Being Raised with Black and Biracial Brothers and Sisters
by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda
In Their Siblings’ Voices shares the stories of twenty white non-adopted siblings who grew up with black or biracial brothers and sisters in the late 1960s and 1970s. Belonging to the same families profiled in Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda’s In Their Own…
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In Their Parents’ Voices: Reflections on Raising Transracial Adoptees
by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda
Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda’s In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories shared the experiences of twenty-four black and biracial children who had been adopted into white families in the late 1960s and ’70s. The book has since become a standard resource…
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In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories
by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda
Nearly forty years after researchers first sought to determine the effects, if any, on children adopted by families whose racial or ethnic background differed from their own, the debate over transracial adoption continues. In this collection of interviews conducted with black and biracial young adults…
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Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA
by Richard Hill
Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA is the highly suspenseful account of an adoptee trying to reclaim the biological family denied him by sealed birth records. This fascinating quest, including the author’s landmark use of DNA testing, takes readers on an…
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The Sound of Hope: A True Story of an Adoptee’s Quest for Her Origins
by Anne Bauer
Anne Bauer, an adoptee, cannot pretend that she had another life and another family before being adopted. Much of Anne’s childhood was spent wondering about her other mother. She desperately wanted to know where she was, what she looked like and most importantly, why she…
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Called Home, Book 2: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
Edited by Patricia Busbee and Trace A. DeMeyer
From recent news about Baby Veronica to history like Operation Papoose, this book examines how Native American adoptees and their families experienced adoption and were exposed to the genocidal policies of governments who created Indian adoption projects. The editors Trace A. DeMeyer and Patricia Busbee, both…
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Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity
by Paige Adams Strickland
In Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity, Paige tells stories from the perspective of a child and adolescent, growing up with a closely guarded secret. Through vignettes, Paige relates feelings about her adoption to forming and maintaining relationships, caring for pets,…
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Toxic Mom Toolkit: Discovering a Happy Life Despite Toxic Parenting
by Rayne Wolfe
Toxic Mom Toolkit takes on super toxic mothers with humor, kindness, and practical tools to help readers build a peaceful and happy life. The book includes Wolfe’s memoir of growing up brave and scrappy in 1950s San Francisco, the daughter of three mothers: an absent…
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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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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 Secret of Me: A Novel in Poems
by Meg Kearney
The acclaimed story of an adopted teenager’s quest to find her place among family, friends, and the wider world. Fourteen-year old Lizzie, as well as her older brother and sister, were adopted as infants. But facts are not feelings, and what it feels like to…
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An Unkindness of Ravens
by Meg Kearney
In An Unkindness of Ravens, Meg Kearney’s poems weave voices of estrangement and redemption: mothers, daughters, lovers of gin and dead things. In the middle poems, the protagonist confronts “Raven”: a figure of guises and disguises, revealing the speaker’s fears and angst. National Book Critics…
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Home by Now
by Meg Kearney
The characters of Meg Kearney’s gritty second poetry collection travel the shadows and edges of modern life. Searching for home and knowing that, once found, home might dissolve without warning, Kearney carves a richly lyric poetry. You will hear the voices of this striking book…
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You Remind Me of Me
by Dan Chaon
You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother’s pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother’s backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager…