Minnesota has one of the highest number of adopted Koreans, per capita, in the world, and yet there is nothing in our state’s annals to document this. This book was conceived to recognize the 13,000 to 15,000 of us who have immigrated to Minnesota, and to celebrate our existence, experiences, and perspectives, which are as diverse as our faces. We are everyday people, yet unique. We are girls, boys, women, men, babies, teens, and adults; singles, partnered, married, gay, straight, and transgendered; sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. We are a living, breathing part of Minnesota history. This book has no agenda it is neither for nor against international adoption. We merely present the spectrum of our adopted community and how we have altered the face of Minnesota since the 1950s. Most important, we felt the urgent need to create this book as a resource not only for the present population, but also for future adoptees. After all, many of us do not have access to our Korean families and ancestry, and this book may provide the only touchstone many of us will ever have.

The gripping story of the denial of a young woman’s parentage—the agony of not knowing one’s true heritage—a subject much in the news as thousands of adopted children search for their true parents.

From the Back Cover: Lorraine McGee-Sippel was just a small girl when she asked her parents what a half-caste was. It was the 1950s and the first step on a journey that would lead her to search for her birth family.

In the historic climate of the Rudd Government’s Apology, McGee-Sippel aligns herself with the Stolen Generations as she discovers how government policy saw her adoptive parents being told their daughter was of Afro-American descent. Her story explores the fragility of reconnection, cultural identity and the triumphs of acceptance.

---

About the Author: Lorraine McGee-Sippel is a descendent of the Yorta Yorta people from the Murray-Goulburn region on the Victorian-NSW border. She is a contributor to numerous anthologies and publications, and in 2008 she received the Inaugural Yabun Elder of the Year Award for her contribution to reconciliation and community work.

From the Publisher: The Hidden Addiction: Behind Shoplifting and Other Self-defeating Behaviors is based on the premise that people don’t want to make their life any harder than it is and that when they are shown who they really are as individuals and how to easily change their thinking and beliefs which are false or self-destructive, they can be guided to significantly alter their life solely on their own steam. The goal is to strengthen people to be who they want to be by presenting core issues in life rarely taught at home or in school in this practical and unique manner.

---

About the Author: Peter Berlin has appeared on national TV, radio, in magazines and news media for over 30 years as a person who initially apprehended and interviewed shoplifters in retail stores and later founded the first national non-profit organization to help rehabilitate offenders.

After receiving a BS degree in Psychology from Long Island University, Mr. Berlin later began working in retail stores interviewing shoplifters and dishonest employees and began to discover how many otherwise decent people engage in self-defeating behaviors without ever understanding why ... or how to resolve their addictive patterns. He later discovered that the same stress, overreaction and inability to cope that lead people to shoplift is also replicated in other self-defeating behaviors.

Mr. Berlin later began working with prosecutors, judges and probation personnel in juvenile and criminal courts to enroll shoplifters into education programs which he developed with a staff of psychologists. His national education programs have been accepted in thousands of courts in 46 states.

Mr. Berlin also joined the prestigious Price Waterhouse firm and became the head of international consulting on retail theft to more than 100 retail firms worldwide. He published international monthly newsletters for 24 years.

Mr. Berlin is a speaker and writer on the resolution of self-defeating behaviors.

---

Compiler’s Note: In Chapter 3, “Life Throws Us Curves: Your Response is What Makes the Difference,” the author employs his own experience as a late-discovery adoptee at age 50 as an illustrative example.

From the Back Cover: Imagine growing up in one culture, only to find out that you belong to another. Adopted at birth, Paul Summers grew up in white, middle-class America and didn’t discover his Native American heritage until he was in his mid-30s. Risking everything to reunite with his blood family on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation, he sets out to reconnect with his true ancestry and bridge the gap between White and Native America.

Follow Paul as he takes the name LaRoche and carves out a brand new musical genre spanning his two worlds. Hidden Heritage details the fusion of his ordinary Minnesota lifestyle with a rich Lakota heritage and the creation of his band, Brulé. Finally coming into his own, Paul finds himself crossing cultural boundaries with a message of reconciliation and healing.

---

About the Author: Barbara Marshak is a freelance writer and author with nearly 100 published articles and stories. Her work can be found in several compilation book series such as Groovy Chicks, Cup of Comfort, and God’s Way. She has also written articles for national and regional periodicals such as Guideposts, Minnesota Monthly, and Lake Country Journal. In 2006 she was selected as a featured author in Bylines.

A native of Minnesota, Barbara enjoys writing heartwarming stories that readers find rewarding and uplifting. She especially values inspiring, true life dramas and is privileged to bring Hidden Heritage to the printed page. Barbara and her husband, John, reside in the Twin Cities and have a blended family of six children.

Hidden Lives presents compelling true stories of three New York City immigrant families—one Jewish, one German, and one Italian—set in three tenement neighborhoods—the Lower East Side, the South Bronx, and Hell’s Kitchen—during the first decades of the twentieth century. In each of these narratives, the central character is a woman without power and without voice. Their stories, compassionately told, bring to life statistics that record the city’s stunning population growth between 1880 and 1910. The three women are Rogers’ grandmothers, their stories kept secret for almost a century. She has chosen to break the silence that surrounded their lives and pay tribute to women too long hidden from view. Hidden Lives is also the story of her search for her families’ past. Rogers writes, “Minnie, Margaretha, and Catherine could not share recipes or handiwork or wisdom with me. I never knew them. But I have learned to love them and cherish their heritage. I am them—Jewish and Catholic, German and Italian, tougher than I thought, more fragile, too.” About the Author: Carole Garibaldi Rogers is a journalist, oral historian, and poet. For more than 30 years, she has published numerous articles and essays in national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and America. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of small-press journals and in anthologies. She has a Master of Arts degree in theology. This is her eighth book. She and her husband live in Morristown, New Jersey. Compiler’s Note: The author first learned from her father that her mother had been adopted when her mother suffered debilitating heart attacks and strokes at the age of 86. Never having known either of her grandmothers, the discovery prompts Rogers to become better acquainted with not just her mother’s two mothers (Minnie and Margaretha), but her father’s mother (Catherine), as well. Based upon available information and without access to the book, I deduce that Rogers was raised Catholic by her Italian father and German (by adoption) mother, and thus, her mother’s birth mother, Minnie, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who lived on the Lower East Side.

In 1971, an Iranian boy was hastily adopted by an American military family stationed in Teheran. The family was secretly paid thousands of dollars to swiftly get the boy out of Iran. After coming to America and enduring years of abuse by his adoptive father, the young man fled his adoptive family in 1997 and began a twelve-year quest to discover his true identity. The Hidden One is an autobiographical memoir which chronicles the events and discoveries that bring the author to the realization that he is the first, or less possibly the second, biological son of the Shah (King) of Iran. Exactly where the author stands in the line of succession to Iran’s former Peacock Throne remains a mystery. No one with knowledge of his royal lineage will speak because billions of dollars are at stake and the Iranian royal family remains very powerful. Join the author as he searches for his birth mother, for the truth about his identity as a prince, and as he discovers that he is The Hidden One. About the Author: Cyrus Nowia-Pahlavi does not know his exact date of birth or where he was born. He came to the United States from Teheran, Iran, in 1973, after being adopted by an American military family. As a military “brat,” he lived with his surrogate family in Michigan, Alaska, and Florida, and, after leaving home at age 17, has traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad. He currently makes his home in Florida, where he writes and pursues a variety of other entrepreneurial endeavors and business ventures.

From the Dust Jacket: Part autobiography, part how-to manual, superstar female impersonator Frank Marino talks about performing in the neon city of Las Vegas for the past ten years, along with all the trials and tribulations that he’s encountered along the way. Don’t miss his many make-up and beauty secrets, fashion advice, and exercise tips on how to keep that “girlish figure.”

He keeps his audience in stitches while his surgeon keeps him in stitches with over nine plastic surgeries. Plus, many hysterical face-to-face encounters with superstars like Joan Rivers, Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton and Diana Ross.

Given up by his birth mother, adopted by the Marinos, who passed away while he was still a young boy, raised by his godparents, he began a college career with an interest in Medical School. Until that Halloween night when he realized he was better at impersonating famous women.

At one point, he became so good that he was actually sued by comedian Joan Rivers for over five million dollars. This was the first time an impersonator was ever sued by a celebrity. “Thank God we settled out of court, I was about eighty bucks short.” The flip side to this, was that all the national press and publicity made Frank Marino a bigger star than ever.

His curious nature eventually led him to search out his biological mother, only to discover: He may have found the wrong woman.

You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look at his many talk show and television appearances with hilarious anecdotes and never-before-seen snap shots from Frank’s personal photo album. He’s climbed the ladder of success, which is no easy task, especially when you’re wearing high heels. Discover the rest of his fairy tale as you enter into the kingdom of: His Majesty, the Queen!

This is my story of personal and spiritual renewal, of God’s sovereign hand on my life; bringing me through a bad adoption, abuse, and separation. It includes being reunited with both biological and adoptive family after more than fifty years separation. It is a vivid and precise illustration that it is God who is in control and not man; a fascinating example of how the Lord has orchestrated the events in my life for His own purpose and Glory. This book is written for: The adopted—particularly the abused, who may think God has forgotten them; and the assurance that He has not. The discouraged—Christian and non-Christian alike, who may wonder if God cares about their individual struggles, the “Where is He when I need Him?”-type feelings; and revealing the certainty that He is very much involved in our lives, whether we can see it or not. The lost—I share my salvation experience; the incredible patience of “The Hound of Heaven,” and the working of the Holy Spirit in bringing an angry rebellious individual (me) to Christ. Indeed, this book is for anyone interested in the popular current topics of adoption, child abuse, personal identity issues, and anyone seeking an answer to the question, “Does God care?”

From the Back Cover: A History of Silence is a touching memoir about a country and a landscape. It’s about the devastation in Christchurch after the 2011 earthquake and the fault lines that this event opened up in Lloyd Jones’s understanding of his own family. It’s about how easily we erase from our history the stories that we find inconvenient.

In his typically lyrical and engaging prose, Jones embarks on a journey of discovery. On this journey he finds out more about his country and the landscape that surrounds him, but he also uncovers the truth about his family. The truth is completely unexpected and changes everything. This deeply moving book is about loss and survival and silence.

---

About the Author: Lloyd Jones was born in New Zealand in 1955. His best-known novel is Mister Pip, which won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the 2008 Kiriyama Prize Fiction Category, the 2008 Montana Award for Readers Choice, the Montana Fiction Award and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry. It was also short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and has been made into a major feature film, directed by Andrew Adamson. His other books include Hand Me Down World (2011), The Book of Fame (2014), Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance (2008), and Biografi (1994). He has also published a collection of short stories, The Man in the Shed (2009). Lloyd Jones lives in Wellington.

---

Compiler’s Note: Jones’ situation does not fall neatly into any of my defined categories of adoption-related literature, insofar as Jones was not himself adopted. Rather, Jones was the biological child of two people who themselves were both adoptees. I have placed it into the “Adult Adoptees” category because Jones’ memoir concerns his research into parents’ lives.

In 1952 Susan and her brother were given away by their mother and subsequently sent to Australia under the Child Migrant Scheme. Susan’s first book Goodbye, Mummy Darling described her journey through life and her constant search for reasons why. Does a return trip to Australia, compensation from the Australian Government, vital information from the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa, Canada, an invitation to the House of Commons—and a personal apology from Prime Minister Mr Gordon Brown finally allow Susan the forgiveness and understanding she craves? Holding Back the Tears follows Susan’s incredible life and her continued search for answers and information about her tormented childhood. As you read you will see there are many coincidences after the death of her husband which drive her on to achieve her ultimate goal. About the Author: Susan Tickner was born in Cheltenham in 1943. In and out of care from the age of four years old, put up for adoption at the age of seven years, she was sent to Australia as a Child Migrant aged nine years. She returned aged fifteen years old to her mother and stepfather. Pregnant at sixteen years old, her own child was taken and adopted. She ran away to Dublin aged seventeen years, then returned after three years, married a Dubliner and had five children. The first child died aged eighteen months. She eventually divorced after eighteen years. Later she remarried and moved to Spain, returning after five years. Her second husband died eleven years ago after suffering a long illness. Susan continues to work part-time and has four wonderful grown-up children who share more love as a family than anyone could ever imagine possible.

From the Dust Jacket: Like other children of the 1950s, Richard McKenzie remembers pillow fights and pea shootouts; Tarzanlike swings across wooded ravines and carefully camouflaged forts; and later, slicked back hair and an Elvis-inspired cool calculated to impress the girls.

But for McKenzie, the son of alcoholic and abusive parents, these happy memories came after years of violence and fear. Placed at the age of ten in a home for children in North Carolina, he was given a chance to make a new beginning. This poignant memoir, written with heartfelt immediacy, tells the story of his life there more than four decades ago.

Neither the idealistic world of “Boys Town” nor a cold and loveless Dickensian institution, The Home, as everyone called it, provided its charges with the stability they needed to build character and self-respect. “We had the knowledge,” he writes, “that The Home would always be there, no mean advantage for children whose families had failed them.”

Nestled on 1,500 acres of pastures and forests, The Home provided plenty of space to grow and dream. Young McKenzie and his buddies—some orphans but most, Like McKenzie, victims of poverty and abandonment—worked hard and played hard. And while at times they longed for a mother’s kiss or a father’s embrace, they recognized that The Home provided them with a shelter that their own families could not.

Remarkably, after leaving The Home, almost all continued on to college. NcKenzie is now an internationally known professor of economics, the author of more than twenty books, and the happily married father of four. Most of his friends from The Home have similarly found success.

Today, our foster care system is strained far beyond capacity; countless children languish in broken families with insufficient means. Shining a refreshingly clear light on the ongoing debate about the proper fate of these children, Richard McKenzie’s story vividly reminds us that institutional care can be the best choice for children trapped in the worst circumstances.

---

About the Author: Richard McKenzie is the Walter B. Gerken Professor of Enterprise and Society in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of more than twenty books on economics.

---

By the Same Author: Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century (Editor; 1998, Sage Publications); Home Away from Home: The Forgotten History of Orphanages (Editor; 2009, Encounter Books); and Miracle Mountain: A Hidden Sanctuary for Children, Horses, and Birds Off a Road Less Traveled (2013, Dickens Press), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: Hugh Leonard’s Home Before Night tells the story of his growing up, in the thirties, on the outskirts of Dublin as the adopted son of the gentle “Da” and his sharp-tongued wife. Both are determined that “Jack” shall better himself, though where the bettering will take him they cannot envisage.

At first very much the parents’ story, its triumph is to show how a kind, weak, foolish labouring man and his sour, ambitious wife can hold together in spite of their frailties, and make a sheltering family for their exasperated, guilty, but still loving, son.

It is not until he is a good deal older that Jack comes to realize that “Love upside down is love for all that,” but it is this realization which gives the memoir its marvellous warmth. The impoverished and benighted background thick with drunken uncles and mad aunts, the family rows, the quirks of priests and Brothers who enter the life of the scholarship boy, and those sad eccentrics in the offices of the Land Commission (which is where his bettering takes him) are all remembered with affection. And the account of adolescence must be one of the most comic and touching ever written.

Home Before Night is a richly humorous work by the playwright author of Da, which cannot fail to please.

---

About the Author: Hugh Leonard was born in Dublin in 1926. Like the “Jack” of the book he was educated at Presentation College, Dun Laoghaire and then spent fourteen years as a clerk in the Land Commission. He was able to give this job up when he began to have some success as a playwright. Although a number of his plays have been performed on TV and stage in London and on the Continent his real breakthrough came last year on Broadway with his play Da—the story of his relationship with his foster-father—which won all the major drama awards. Hugh Leonard lives in Dublin where he writes a weekly satirical column for the Sunday Independent and has a regular Saturday morning radio show.

From the Dust Jacket: In the early 1940s, Evelyn Stemp and her two sisters were taken into care following the death of their mother. Evelyn, aged four, and her sister Edie were separated from their little sister Jean for reasons that were never explained to them. Thus begins a harsh regime, from a children’s home where a blind eye is turned to the abuse handed out by older children, to being fostered by a cruel couple who confine the children to the scullery.

Eventually the children’s fortunes change and they complete their childhood in a happy rural hoe. But when, in her adult life, Evelyn sets out to discover the mystery family she and her sisters were unaware they had, the memories of neglect come flooding back. Home Kids is the record of Evelyn’s voyage of discovery, told in an authentic voice that touches the heart.

---

Evelyn Stemp was born in High Wycombe in 1938 and was sent to live in a children’s home in Buckinghamshire at the age of four, with her older sister Edie. Evelyn was fostered along with Edie and her younger sister Jean by a couple who lived in the village of Tingewick, near Buckingham, where she eventually spent a happy childhood. After leaving school Evelyn worked in electronics and design, before marrying and having two children. She now lives in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

From the Back Cover: This beautiful and striking book examines one of the most enduring subjects in the history of picture-making: the image of the mother. Focusing on the work of twelve international photographic artists, the publication challenges the stereotypical or sentimental views of motherhood handed down by traditional depictions, exploring instead how photography can be used to address changing conditions of power, gender, domesticity, the maternal body and female identity.

The work featured here is highly personal, often documentary in approach, and with the individual at its centre, reflecting photography itself in the twenty-first century. The artists offer very different views of contemporary motherhood, from the devoted to the dysfunctional, representing the myriad ways that becoming—or even trying to become—a mother can radically alter a woman’s sense of self and how others perceive her. Each one deals with the many truths of motherhood—its joys and sorrows, its harrowing chaos, its immense expectations—illuminating this fundamentally human theme in honest, compelling and provocative fashion.

---

From the Foreword, “Motherlode: Photography, Motherhood and Representation” by Susan Bright: The effects of loss are particularly apparent in the work of Ann Fessler (American, b. 1950). In the autobiographical Along the Pale Blue River (2001/2013) Fessler combines her own video footage with vintage film to create collaged images of farms and rivers in the rural Midwest of America.

The narrative that unfolds is of a young woman who, when finding out she is pregnant, flees her rural community for anonymity in a city where she can give up her baby for adoption. Forty years later, the adopted daughter searches for her birth mother, having identified her picture in a school yearbook. Seeking the family farm, she realizes that the river that flowed by her childhood home had its source in this rural place. Via this metaphorical umbilical cord with the past, Fessler—an adopted child raised by a woman who was herself adopted—traces the tales of tragedy and loss that run through every single case of adoption, but also establishes a poetic connection of strange coincidence and chance with her own biological mother in an effort to reconstruct her life story.

---

About a Featured Contributor: Ann Fessler is a film-maker, video/sound installation artist and author. Her work has focused on the stories of women and the impact the myths, stereotypes and mass-media images have on their lives and intimate relationships. Fessler turned to the subject of adoption in 1989. Since then, she has produced three films (Cliff & Hazel [1999], A Girl Like Her [2011], e.g.) and written a non-fiction book on adoption, The Girls Who Went Away. In 2003-4, she was awarded a prestigious Radcliffe Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, to continue her research, conduct interviews and produce new work. The Girls Who Went Away was chosen as one of the top five non-fiction books of 2006 by the National Book Critics Circle, won the Ballard Book Prize, and was chosen by the readers of Ms. magazine as one of the top 100 feminist books of all time.

The Village Family Service Center began in 1891 as the North Dakota Children’s Home. Learn a piece of The Village history through the writings of Dorothy Lund Nelson, who grew up in the North Dakota Children’s Home as the daughter of the house-parents.

I was born during the depression, or rather at the end of it. By all rights, I shouldn’t be here. I was the eleventh child and I’m sure my arrival was not heralded as a blessed event. I should have been dead before my first birthday and tagged as another statistical victim of poverty. My family would have to borrow money to be labeled “poor.” They were in downright poverty. I wasn’t a bad child, but I wasn’t a good child either. ... I was spoiled by my adoptive parents. Especially my dad. Mom was overprotective, but I never doubted I was loved. I am now 80 years old and this is my first book. I am pleased to share my life with you and your family. This is my story, growing up in Oregon. For I am “A Home-Grown Kid.”

From the Back Cover: In these poignant essays, women writers explore the complexities of immigration, war, exile, and diaspora as they seek to redefine and reclaim the meaning of homeland. Whether home is an actual geographic place, a self-defined community, a cultural heritage, or a wavering memory, Homelands reveals a truth that is known by all who have wandered from their roots: A homeland is far more than just a physical space. In giving voice to these different experiences of home, the women in this collection conjure nostalgia and illuminate the triumph of the human spirit.

---

About the Author: Patricia Justine Tumang (also known as Patty) was born and raised in California. In 2001, she received a BA in Cultural Studies with a path in Race, Ethnicity, and Postcolonialism from Eugene Lang College in New York City. In 2006, she earned an MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland, California. Her commitment to social justice, reproductive rights, and antiracist feminism from a Queer Filipina American perspective permeates her life, writing, and activism. Her writing has appeared in the Seal Press anthologies Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice, Waking Up American: Growing Up Biculturally, and Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, as well as The Womanist and Hyphen Magazine. She serves on the Editorial Board of Exhale’s Our Truths/Nuestras Verdades, a grassroots, bilingual (Spanish/English) magazine focused on women’s experiences with abortion. She has received multiple honors for her writing and activist work, including a Third Wave Foundation grant from its Scholarship Program for Young Women and Transgender Activists and a Zora Neale Hurston Award for writers of color. She is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Oakland, California.

Jenesha (“Jinky”) de Rivera is a first-generation Filipina American writer, performer, and activist. She was born and raised in New York City. In 2004, she moved to Oakland, California, to pursue an MFA in English and Creative Writing at Mills College. Her essay “A Lesson in Posture” was published in the Seal Press anthology Waking Up American: Growing Up Biculturally. She is an active member of LGBT and people of color activist communities in both New York City and the Bay Area, serves on the Board of Directors of the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission, and works as a nonprofit financial consultant. Her long commitment to social justice informs her craft. Her short story “Bayan Ko” was featured in Colorlines magazine’s first fiction issue (November 2006). She plans to publish a collection of short stories soon.

Pauline Park is the chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in New York. She has written and spoken widely on issues of race, nationality, and gender. She is also the subject of a documentary by Larry Tung about her life and work.

Jill Kim Soohoo is currently making history by being part of the only Asian women’s lion and dragon dance troupe in North America, Gund Kwok. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is editor in chief of The ASPIRE Connection, a magazine for a career-development organization for Asian American women. She has an MA in Creative Nonfiction from Emerson College.

---

Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “Homeward Bound: The Journey of a Transgendered Korean Adoptee” by Pauline Park; and “Home, Adopted” by Jill Kim Soohoo.

It might look like the plot of a beautiful movie, but in this autobiographical book—written with touching honesty and dignity—everything is authentic and real. The author’s struggle against prejudice and loneliness seemed to have condemned him to a life of unhappiness. Yet, thanks to hope, he eventually managed to give his life a new, positive, direction—thus demonstrating how powerful hope can be.

From the Dust Jacket: From the moment he was born, Andrew Bridge and his mother, Hope, shared a love so deep that it felt like nothing else mattered. Trapped in desperate poverty and confronted with unthinkable tragedies, all Andrew ever wanted was to be with his mom. But as her mental health steadily declined, and with no one else left to care for him, authorities arrived and tore Andrew from his screaming mother’s arms. In that moment, the life he knew came crashing down around him. He was only seven years old.

Hope was institutionalized, and Andrew was placed in what would be his devastating reality for the next eleven years—foster care. After surviving one of our country’s most notorious children’s facilities, Andrew was thrust into a savagely loveless foster family that refused to accept him as one of their own. Deprived of the nurturing he needed, Andrew clung to academics and the kindness of teachers. All the while, he refused to surrender the love he held for his mother in his heart. Ultimately, Andrew earned a scholarship to Wesleyan, went on to Harvard Law School, and became a Fulbright Scholar.

Andrew has dedicated his life’s work to helping children living in poverty and in the foster care system. He defied the staggering odds set against him, and here in this heart-wrenching, brutally honest, and inspirational memoir, he reveals who Hope’s boy really is.

---

About the Author: Formerly the CEO/General Counsel of The Alliance for Children’s Rights, Andrew Bridge lives in New York City. He remains a dedicated and vocal advocate for children in foster care.

From the Publisher: House of Fire shows that thirty years of breaking free from a cycle of violence was not enough to prepare Elizabeth di Grazia for the trials of starting her own family. Growing up in the 1970s, she suffered repeated sexual abuse, incest, and neglect. Although in the Catholic church, she was forced to have a hushed-up abortion at the age of fourteen. Within a year she was pregnant again, by another brother. Di Grazia gave birth to a son who was quickly taken away and adopted into a family she never knew. Elizabeth’s story traces her healing and the creation of an intentional family. She and her partner, Jody, adopted two Guatemalan babies. They learned that provision and protection were not enough, but refused to allow denial and secrets to go unexposed became critical.

---

About the Author: Elizabeth di Grazia graduated from Hamline University with an MFA in Writing in 2003. She has a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and volunteers with the Police Reserves. She lives with her family in Richfield, Minnesota.

How I Met My Mother is the true story of how seemingly random and unrelated incidents nudged a son towards an amazing reunion with his biological mother. Living his life wondering who his real parents were while unaware that he was working directly across the street from his biological father is just one of the many uncanny coincidences described in this book. This is the story of a reunion that happened in the most unconventional way—a reunion that answered years of questions and speculations, and changed several lives forever! Not knowing his history or heritage for almost four decades, Charles Cornacchio’s past was suddenly revealed. For anyone who wonders what “could have been” if life took a different turn, this is a must-read! For anyone who has been adopted and always fantasized about meeting their biological parents, this is a must-read! For anyone who enjoys a true story, peppered with unbelievable circumstances, this book is a must-read! How I Met My Mother: And the Four Brothers I Never Knew I Had is the story of a reunion thirty-eight years in the making. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what might have been if life had taken a different turn, Charles’s tale of family and destiny will capture your imagination.

From the Introduction: The desire to know more about one’s heritage is being increasingly fulfilled by more and more adoptees who are seeking and finding their birth families. This booklet will help the adoptee in his search. It is especially for the reader who does not think it is possible to do this, or does not know where to begin.

Author’s Note: The effects of loss of my mother at birth radiated through every aspect of my life without my being aware of it. Losing her was a traumatic experience. Her absence filled my world; it was my background sadness, always there, never acknowledged. Through my therapy, I came to realize that healing from trauma is possible. I learned how to listen to my inner children, how to know at all times what I am feeling, how to comfort myself when in pain, how to take charge of my life and be responsible for my own actions, how to enjoy my own company when alone. Through all this, to my astonishment, I found peace and contentment.

I wrote this book to help others know that we can survive and heal as long as we do not quit. That we can find peace and contentment, be free of the shackles of fear of our own feelings, be free to truly live.

At thirty years old, Michelle is the same age as the mother who gave her up into care as a baby. In the quest to find her birth parents, her roots and her own identity, this book traces the journey from care, to adoption, to motherhood, to performer. Using the fragments of her own memory, her poetry and extracts from her adoption files, Michelle rebuilds the picture of “self” that allows her to transcend adversity and move forward to become the woman she was born to be.

My sister Sherry and I grew up in separate foster homes in Louisiana, so I wanted to give her the memories that a big sister should have of her little brother.

Being told by doctors at the age of five that she would die in her teens, Nikki Abramson learned how to live in the present. Mentors taught her how to overcome challenges and obstacles through faith and believing in the power of positivity. Nikki addresses what it is like to want to “fit in” with society through her struggles as an international adoptee and battling serious rare disabilities. Her courage to go on when life is challenging is an inspiration to all. Nikki spells out what hope means to her. Finding hope is not easy and is an everyday battle. “Struggles are a part of life. We can either go through it with a cloud over our head, or we can look at it as an opportunity.” She sees life as an opportunity: to help others discover their potential and to make a difference in their lives. This book includes pictures of Nikki’s life, beautiful illustrations, and journal and discussion questions to reflect upon one’s own life experiences.

This is a book about my life as a young boy being adopted from an orphanage when I was 4 1/2 years old. The people adopting me were not prepared to have a child. There were many trials and tribulations during the years I was with my adopted parents. I was adopted by a couple who thought their marriage would be repaired if they were to bring a young child into their family. Not expecting the kind of difficulties they would have with a high-energy child, when they tried to communicate with this child they were unable to resolve issues in child behavior.

Growing up in foster homes for Ruth was the worst; not always is it a pleasure; sometimes it can be a disaster. If you get the wrong home; you could be raped, ignored, abused or even worse ... you could be separated from your sibling.

Author relates her life story from being an orphan during the Great Depression to becoming a noted Californian.