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I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls

by Mary Ellen Gambutti

Travel with the author on her quest for identity in her compelling collage hybrid memoir. In a wealth of creative non-fiction prose, archival letters, articles, and photos, she portrays an abandoned newborn girl adopted by an Air Force couple in post-World War II South Carolina. Her adoptive father’s career as an Intelligence officer, his demands for model behavior and discipline, his absences, and family transience during the 1950s and the turbulent 1960s feed the sensitive adoptee’s fear, anxiety, and identity confusion. When the need to know her full life story surfaces at forty, she must rely on adoptee rights advocates to break the barrier of sealed records and launch the search for her birth mother and kin. Decades later, with DNA self-discovery, she embarks on a parallel journey of self-discovery. She has triumphed over adversity; gaining a wealth of family and true heritage. The author has rendered this tangle of loss and privilege in deeply personal, lyrical language.

2nd Ed features an expanded image gallery in the ebook, bibliography, and resources.

Adoptee Author: Mary Ellen Gambutti

Publication Year: 2022


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I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls
I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls
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