Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Memoir/Biography

  • 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 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 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 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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  • Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Edited by Laura Dennis

    This anthology gives voice to the wide experiences of adoptees and those who love them; examining the emotional, psychological and logistical effects of adoption reunion. Primarily adult adoptee voices, we also hear from adoptive parents, first moms and mental health professionals, all weighing in on…

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  • After the Truth: A Memoir

    After the Truth: A Memoir

    by Paige Adams Strickland

    What do you do when you are an adopted adult, trying to balance biological and adoptive families in addition to your own home life? How could being adopted have an impact on your career, your friendships and parenting decisions? What do you do when your…

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  • Against All Odds

    Against All Odds

    by Theresa Hiney Tinggal

    The true story of Irish woman Theresa Hiney Tinggal, who at the age of 48 discovered that she was illegally registered as the biological child of her adoptive parents. Her subsequent quest for the truth led her on a journey where she discovered that there…

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  • Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity

    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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  • All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

    All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

    by Nicole Chung

    What does it mean to lose your roots―within your culture, within your family―and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood,…

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  • Almost Home: A Memoir

    Almost Home: A Memoir

    by Hilary Harper

    While snooping in a closet as an adolescent, Hilary Harper discovers a secret: her parents are not her parents. Documents reveal her mother to be a vague, distant relative who died in a car crash. Her father is “unknown.” Vividly depicting the suburban Detroit neighborhood…

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  • American Bastard

    American Bastard

    by Jan Beatty

    American Bastard is a lyrical inquiry into the experience of being a bastard in America. This memoir travels across literal continents–and continents of desire as Beatty finds her birthfather, a Canadian hockey player who’s won three Stanley Cups–and her birthmother, a working-class woman from Pittsburgh. This…

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  • An Adoptee Lexicon

    An Adoptee Lexicon

    by Karen Pickell

    Lyrical and informative, An Adoptee Lexicon is a glossary of adoption terminology from the viewpoint of an adult adoptee. Contemplating religion, politics, science, and human rights, Karen Pickell, who was born and adopted in the late 1960s, intersperses personal commentary and snippets from her own experience with…

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  • An Affair with My Mother: A Story of Adoption, Secrecy and Love

    An Affair with My Mother: A Story of Adoption, Secrecy and Love

    by Caitríona Palmer

    Caitríona Palmer had a happy childhood in Dublin, raised by loving adoptive parents. But when she was in her late twenties, she realized that she had a strong need to know the woman who had given birth to her. She was able to locate her…

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