From the Back Cover: In this beautiful and touching book, Mary Quigley takes us into the world of adoption, from the perspective of the one adopted and from that of the parents who adopt. Your heart will be moved by this story and by the poignancy with which Mary portrays her life and the lives of those whom she cares about. Mary draws us into the events of her life and makes us companions on her journey.

— Father Paul Keenan, host, “As You Think,” Monday through Friday on The Catholic Channel/Sirius 159

---

Mary Quigley masters the art of navigation through history in her fleeting read, Indelible Ink. With precise attention to voice, she transports the literary traveler through the portals of the past, engaging a universality that will mark all passports PRESENT. An indeed read for the person who prefers dynamic to static.”

— Patricia Ellyn Powell, author, Louisiana in Words

---

Let Mary Lenore Quigley’s journey from First Communion to reuniting with her birth mother take you on an enlightening adventure! Her story is rich, passionate, and heart warming. For all genealogy researchers and adopted children, this book is a must-read!

— June Cotner, author, Graces, House Blessings and other books

---

About the Author: Mary Lenore Quigley, wife. mom, grandma, avid genealogist, West Virginia transplant, and writer with a passion for poetry, lives with her hubby, Patrick, in Lake San Marcos, California. Quigley is the author of two books: God Danced and By Fools Like Me; and two poetry chapbooks: Going Home and Remnants. Her poetry appears in magazines: V-8 Times, The Bernardo Grapevine, San Diego Arts & Poets, The Pen Women, as well as collections: Beyond Katrina, Heart of a Woman; A Place of Amazing Grace; The 2006 San Diego Poetry Annual, and June Cotner’s top selling collections: Teen Sunshine Reflections; Wedding Blessings; House Blessings; Forever in Love; Miracles of Motherhood; and To Have and To Hold. She is a Letters member of The National League of American Pen Women and founder of NCAP, North County Authors and Poets of San Diego. CA.

Within the pages of this account you will be taken on a heartfelt journey from child adoptee to reunited adoptee and all the stops along the way. The author navigates the roller coaster ride of emotions that come along with being a part of the adoption triad of adoptive parents, birth parents and adoptee. Grace plays an integral role along this journey that culminates in resolution on every conceivable level.

Abandoned by his mother in a St. Petersburg dumpster when he was only three days old, Alex Krutov should not have survived. But God had something else in mind. Raised in the harsh Russian orphanage system, Alex’s life was one of hopelessness and despair until the arrival of Christian missionaries from the West when the Soviet Union collapsed. Infinitely More is the inspiring true story of a young man who would not give up, and the God who relentlessly pursued him. Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” This is the story of God coming to Alex, and the hope He offers to all of us. Alex Krutov is the co-founder of The Harbor, a ministry to emancipated orphans in Russia. A graduate of Franklin University in Ohio, he divides his time between the United States and Russia.

For adopted children, the questions are haunting—and unrelenting: Who am I? Why do I feel so different? Why did she give me away. Dennis Penner had to have answers. He was adopted into a loving family, thriving in a closely knit community with a strong foundation of faith. He excelled in sports and later in business but neither sports nor success blunted the hidden struggle in his life. He desperately sought the woman who had given him life, wanting to understand the source of both strengths and weaknesses. And in the course of seeking his genetic heritage, he discovered the spiritual as well.

From the Dust Jacket: The town was Midlothian, Texas. Once it was a rural farming community built around a cement plant, a place far removed from the violence of urban America. Now, because it was a good, safe place to raise kids, it was becoming a bedroom community of Dallas, thirty miles away. Then some of Midlothian’s kids committed a coldblooded murder.

Ona foggy, drizzly night in late October, a young undercover policeman who had been posing as a high school student was lured out into an empty field. The next day, searchers found his body in that field—lying facedown with a bullet in the back of the head.

From Edgar Award-winning writer Carlton Stowers, here is the shocking true story of the last hours of undercover officer George Raffield and the forces that led up to his execution-style killing. While the police solved the murder in a matter of days (“Every damn kid in this town seems to know about this,” one of the cops said), the quest for justice would take much longer. Innocence Lost reconstructs the hidden, violent world that George Raffield discovered in the heart of Midlothian.

Here were teenagers living in a turbulent world of drugs, alienation, and, in one case, Satanic worship. Here was a steady stream of crank and pot being poured straight into the heart of a good and decent town. Here was a distressing number of kids who heard that someone was going to kill George Raffield but who did nothing to stop it, and who, after the crime, expressed little remorse.

Capturing the drama of a tense, twisting investigation, Stowers profiles the men who were charged with hunting the killer down. They were men of another generation, staggered by the coldness and indifference they encountered. And finally, here are those who ended George Raffield’s life: Richard Goeglein, a youth of frightening intensity, who had already been involved in one savage act of violence in Arizona; Greg Knighten, the adopted son of a police officer, a crack shot who bragged that he was “going to kill George”; and Cynthia Fedrick, a woman of twenty-three who supplied the teenagers with drugs and came to their parents’ doors if they didn’t pay.

From high school football games to undercover drug buys, from Sunday morning church services to a body lying facedown in the mud, Innocence Lost takes us on a frightening journey. For not only does one of America’s premier crime writers capture the personalities, the details, and the implications of this act of violence—he shows us the darkest side of America with all the sheer, shocking impact of a pistol shot that will not stop echoing in the brain.

---

About the Author: A native Texan, Carlton Stowers is the author of two dozen nonfiction books, including Careless Whispers, which won the Edgar Award as the best fact crime book of 1986. His reporting has won him awards from the Texas Headliner’s Club, the Dallas Press Club, the Institute of Alternative Journalism and the Dallas Bar Association. In Innocence Lost, he re-creates the horrifying crime that rocked his own community.

Inside Foster Care: A Prison for Abused Children is a poignant and sometimes irreverent memoir of author Randy Rena Corlew’s three-year journey through America’s foster care system. With a quick wit and no-holds-barred delivery, the author offers insight into the plight of children locked within the system that is at best rife with inconsistencies and uncertainties. Not only does this memoir delve deep into the psyche of a former foster child, but it also looks at real world statistics and actual stories of children the author encountered during her years in the system. This gripping tale reveals the loneliness and pain of children virtually abandoned within a system designed to protect them. Delve into the captivating, yet gut-wrenching story of the child once forgotten, who triumphed despite the setbacks and heartache of her life’s journey and come to understand that more needs to be done to right the wrongs of America’s failed system.

I was inspired to write this book. I hope that every mother that is thinking of or know someone who is taking any other way out beside caring for their own child/children will read my book. If a mother can no matter how much of her pride that she will have to swallow to go to the father are the grandparents of her baby/ies on either side to seek help. I hope and pray that they will see that it’s worthwhile for them to come together. So that another child won’t have to grow up without knowing the true love of his or her parents. I’m sharing my feeling that I had growing up as a foster child. I know that I’m not alone. But it doesn’t make my pain any less real or painless. I have found someone who has been with me and didn’t ever leave me. He is The Almighty GOD... I give thanks also to God for Blessing me with such a wonderful Husband. A husband that has patients and understands my needs for his love. Thank you for buying my book. I hope that you will see the need to encourage someone else to buy and read it also.

From the Back Cover: Best-selling publisher Linda Joy brings you a powerful collection of stories from twenty-seven amazing women who have entered a brave new world of conscious, deliberate, positive—and most of all, happy—living.

Through trials and triumphs great and small, these fearless female leaders prove that true fulfillment is the result of connecting to inner wisdom and making choices which honor the truths revealed there. The Reflection Questions which follow each story create a unique “active reading experience” which will empower you to integrate the vital lessons of each woman’s journey into your own life.

These honest, authentic stories from real women will make you smile, cry, and maybe even laugh out loud—but more importantly, they’ll prove to you that everyone, no matter her background or circumstances, can make the powerful choice to be happy!

Contributing authors for Choosing Happiness include: Lisa Marie Rosati, Stacey Martino, Stacey Curnow, Mal Duane, Mary E. Pritchard, Ph.D., Laura Clark, Wendy Van de Poll, Kellyann Schaefer, Peggy Nolan, Shelley Lundquist, Shann Vander Leek, Debra Reble, Ph.D., Boni Lonnsburry, Shelley Riutta, Kristi Ling, Lisa Wells, Christy Whitman, Mia Moran, Lynda Monk, Alexa Linton, Sangita Patel, Linda Bard, Sandi Gordon, Tiffany Kane, Marianne MacKenzie, Tina Van Leuven, and Stacey Hoffer Weckstein.

---

About the Author: Best-selling inspirational publisher, Host, and Authentic Marketing and List-Building Catalyst Linda Joy is one of today’s premier voices in women’s inspirational publishing. Her six multimedia brands serve over 42,000 women who embrace her message of love, feminine wisdom, and self-empowerment. Ms. Joy is passionate about encouraging women to rediscover and reconnect with their inner wisdom, and empowering them to live deeper, more authentic, inspired lives both personally and professionally.

Linda is the publisher of Aspire Magazine, the premier inspirational magazine for women, as well as the Creatrix behind Inspired Living Publishing, through which she has created three bestselling anthologies, Inspiration for a Woman’s Soul: Choosing Happiness (2015), Embracing Your Authentic Self (2011), and A Juicy, Joyful Life (2010). Over eighty visionary women have become best-selling authors thanks to these books and the support and expertise of Inspired Living Publishing’s heart-centered team.

In her role as an Authentic Marketing and List-Building Catalyst, Linda offers high-visibility marketing, publishing, and list building programs to select heart-centered female entrepreneurs, coaches, and visionary authors. Linda’s proven feminine collaborative model puts her clients’ brands, messages, and wisdom in front of the women they are meant to serve while enhancing their expert status.

Bryna René is an experienced editor, published author, yoga instructor, musician, photographer, and “general creative” with a passion for helping others live in greater awareness and joy. Her editing portfolio includes numerous successful non-fiction titles, including both previous Inspired Living Publishing anthologies, A Juicy, Joyful Life (2010) and Embracing Your Authentic Self (2011).

Bryna lives near Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, Matthew, and their daughter, Äine.

Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW, CPCC is a Registered Social Worker, Certified Life Coach, and the founder of Creative Wellness. She regularly teaches about the healing and transformational power of writing through workshops, courses, and retreats. Lynda is the author of Life Source Writing: A Reflective Journaling Practice for Self-Discovery, SelfCare, Wellness and Creativity, and coauthor of Writing Alone Together: Journaling in a Circle of Women for Creativity, Compassion and Connection.

---

Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “Threads of Happiness” by Lynda Monk (pp. 135-140).

From the Back Cover: Intercountry Adoptees Tell Their Stories reflects the thoughts and experiences of adult transracial adoptees. The authors conducted in-depth interviews in order to understand and examine the adoptees’ attitudes towards identity, culture, race, and parenting within a multicultural household. The men and women interviewed in this study offer the readers a detailed and personal glimpse into their worlds. They represent a range of positive and negative adoption stories and describe the complexities of ethnic identity formation. Each experience related in this volume is unique not only in demographic characteristics, but in the journey each participant has undertaken in his or her transition to adulthood and identity formation. What emerges from the interviews is a broad collection of voices speaking out from all corners of the country about their adoption.

---

About the Author: Heather Ahn-Redding is assistant professor of Criminal Justice at High Point University. She received her doctorate in Justice, Law and Society from American University’s School of Public Affairs. She is coauthor of Illicit Drug Policies, Trafficking, and Use the World Over (with Caterina Gouvis Roman and Rita J. Simon, Lexington Books, 2005) and The Crimes Women Commit: The Punishments They Receive (with Rita J. Simon, Lexington Books, 2005).

Rita J. Simon is University Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the Washington College of Law at American University. She is author or editor of numerous books, including Women’s Roles and Statuses the World Over (with Stephanie Hepburn, Lexington Books, 2006), and Adoption Across Borders (with Howard Altstein, Rowinan & Littlefield, 2000).

---

Compiler’s Note: As is so often the case, “intercountry” here is effectively synonymous with “interracial.”

Born in a convent to an unwed mother before adoption was legal in Ireland, Maura O’Sullivan was raised by a “nursing mother.” She knew she was different from her two older siblings but her history was never discussed in her childhood home. Her journey in the pursuit of happiness took her from Ireland to England and finally to America. While living in America Maura got what she wanted most in life: a family of her own. “I was going to have a baby whether I was married or not, it was just that important to me,” she says. Maura married her American sweetheart, and they raised four daughters together. Jack provided well for his family but he didn’t make life easy for Maura and their children. Even so, Maura found a way to live the life she wanted. Socrates famously said the unexamined life is not worth living, but it’s one thing to review the details of your life in the privacy of your own home; it’s another to share your story with anyone who wants to read about it. As openly and as honestly as she can, Maura gives us the gift of an examined life. By doing so she enriches all of us and will continue to do so long after she takes off on her last great adventure.

From the Back Cover: What is “identity” when you’re a girl adopted as an infant by a Cuban American family of Jehovah’s Witnesses? The answer isn’t easy. You won’t find it in books. And you certainly won’t find it in the neighborhood. This is just the beginning of Joy Castro’s unmoored life of searching and striving that she’s turned to account with literary alchemy in Island of Bones.

In personal essays that plumb the depths of not-belonging, Castro takes the all-too-raw materials of her adolescence and young adulthood and views them through the prism of time. The result is an exquisitely rendered, richly detailed perspective on a uniquely troubled young life that reflects on the larger questions each of us faces in a world where diversity and singularity are forever at odds. In the experiences of her past—hunger and abuse, flight as a fourteen-year-old runaway, single motherhood, the revelations of her “true” ethnic identity, the suicide of her father—Castro finds the “jagged, smashed place of edges and fragments” that she pieces together to create an island all her own. Hers is a complicated but very real depiction of what it is to “jump class,” to not belong but to find one’s voice in the interstices of identity.

---

About the Author: Joy Castro is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the Department of English and the Institute for Ethnic Studies. Castro’s first book, The Truth Book: A Memoir (now available as a Nebraska Paperback), was named a Book Sense Notable Book by the American Booksellers Association, and her novel, Hell or High Water, was a National Latino Book Club selection.

Islands of Sunshine and Shadow is the story of an extraordinary man living through ordinary times, or perhaps it is the story of an ordinary man living through extraordinary times. From his childhood in the off-shore British island of Guernsey, which was pretty idyllic—except for the very difficult matter of not knowing who his true parents were—to a chaotic time spent in England as a child refugee from the Second World War, to where he now lives in Frankston, Southern Australia, there have been numerous good and bad times to deal with as he sometimes stumbled or hurtled along on his journey. Bernard Blestel’s life story will revive details and memories that are familiar to many readers, and will undoubtedly open the eyes of many others whose lives have taken different paths. His generosity of spirit casts a shining light on the way that he has dealt with all his adventures. There is courage, humour and compassion in this true story of a man who climbed out of the shadows and into the sunshine. Islands of Sunshine and Shadow is a gift for all of us who have doubts or fears. A shining light in a shadowy world.

From the Dust Jacket (1934): “So diverse, so conflicting, and so astoundingly confusing was the life experience of Edgar Allan Poe that, in comparison, the lives of many other men of letters are a simple tale .... The story of the man as a human adventure must, by force of its inherent, dramatic, genuinely romantic and strange psychological values, be found intriguing to the last degree.”

From the author's first preface.

When Mr. Allen's Israfel was originally published in two volumes at ten dollars, it was hailed by the critics as a finely told story as well as a distinguished biography. The strange career of one of America’s strangest geniuses offered a fine chance for this author who graphically re-creates the people and scenes of other times, with distinguished ability. Thousands of his readers will find in Israfel an absorbing experience.

Atlantic Bookshelf. Gamaliel Bradford:

“The thoroughness and patience of Mr. Allen’s research and effort in all this investigation of background cannot be too much commended. Mr. Allen applies all his delicate skill of analysis, all the resources of modern psychology, all the sexual conjecture of the Freudians. And still the author of The Raven keeps skillfully, elusively, evasively out of reach. The utmost, inner secrets of the spirit are almost beyond our probing. But surely no one has yet supplied, or probably ever will supply, richer material for such search than Mr. Allen furnished in this biography.”

The Bookman. Lorine Pruette:

“This biography by Hervey Allen comes nearer than any other to covering fully the details of the poet's life.”

The Saturday Review of Literature:

“There is no part of Poe’s life, except perhaps the middle years ... on which it does not throw some fresh light.”

The Dial. George Saintsbury:

“... will probably become the standard life of Poe. Reviewers have been quick to sing its praises; they have mentioned the grasp of character, and discussed the sense of tragedy which makes the work so powerful. ... One need only add that the documentation, which has been criticized on some minor points, is generally to be admired.”

From the Publisher: With a sudden jerk, squealing of brakes and a loud puff of the steam engine, the train shunted forward ... I stared out the window as we slowly pulled out of the station. I was very confused. I saw the women standing on the platform watching us and wailing. Then I saw her. There was my mum in her only good blue dress standing next to my aunts and our old grandmother. Just standing there. Standing there with tears rolling down their cheeks too fast to even wipe away. Then Mum waved a white hanky and I pressed my face against the window pane as hard as I could, watching her. Watching until her blue dress faded into a tiny blue daub of colour...

At the age of five, Donna was taken away from her natural family and sent to a foster family in Newcastle. Donna reflects back on her childhood memories of living in the bush with her brothers and her removal to the city, becoming an only child in a white family.

Donna recalls her struggle with her identity—remembering traditions and customs of her old life in the outback and the adjustments she has had to make in strange city. Donna (aged 40) retells her life story with stark simplicity and honesty . She openly discusses the pain and isolation she has felt at not belonging or feeling at home with the society she has been brought up in. Her desperation took her close to suicide.

This is a powerfully sad yet also uplifting story—sad because of Donna’s long struggle to re-establish her family and culture and coming to terms with her own views about Aboriginal people; and uplifting because of Donna’s deep faith, her own strong family ties with her foster mother and her husband and sons.

Donna’s story is retold with passion but with an absence of bitterness as she tells of the strangeness, and heartbreak of her experiences, and of the kindness of her adoptive family.

From the Publisher: It is said that each of us are nothing more and nothing less than a sum total of the people who have passed through our lives. Those influential people, be they family, friends, co-workers, military buddies or former loves, have each walked some portion of our life journey with us. While many of those people became the background characters of our forward-moving lives, some, a precious few, had extraordinary impacts in our experience and played very important roles in shaping our current self. When one of those influential people falls out of our daily life, it can leave a hole that often evolves into an ache. That growing ache is what has driven tens of thousands of people from all walks of life to seek out the wisdom and expertise of Troy Dunn. His tireless efforts to seek out and reunite people with their most important missing loved ones have taken him on a 20-year journey that has become his life’s work. While rebuilding over 40,000 fractured relationships, Troy has harvested priceless insights, which have evolved into powerfully effective relationship tools. It is these specific tools that he credits with the unprecedented success he has had in rebuilding lives and relationships.

Today, his ongoing efforts to grant the wishes of the hopeful and the hopeless are chronicled in the hit TV show, The Locator on WE TV. The Locator, now in its 5th season, follows Troy and his team on the ever-changing path to closure, answers and sometimes, tearful reunions and new beginnings.

As you read this book, Troy will take you behind the scenes of some of his favorite cases and share with you the relationship tools he used to rebuild and resolve. You will be uplifted, inspired and empowered by the journey you are about to embark on with Troy. But more importantly, when you finish, you will possess the effective tools and resources to manage your own relationships and those of the people around you. As Troy reminds us each week on WE TV’s The Locator, “You can’t find peace until you find all the pieces.”

---

About the Author: Troy Dunn is a successful entrepreneur with a focus on family values. Having grown up in a family touched by adoption, Troy saw a need for a service that facilitated the rebuilding of fractured families and those separated through various circumstances. 20 years later, he and his team of passionate searchers and facilitators (led by his mother, Katie) have reunited tens of thousands of families around the world. He continues this life work today via WE tv s hit series, The Locator.

In addition to his hit TV show, Troy is also the co-founder of Dunn Hoisington Leadership, an organization dedicated to teaching and developing leadership skills to Fortune 500 companies around the world. Troy is also seen frequently as a favorite business contributor on Fox News and CNBC.

As much as he enjoys his time rebuilding families or enhancing leadership in organizations, it all comes second behind his highest priority, his family.

From the Publisher: “Hello, is Sarah Saffian there?” asks the voice on the other end of the line. “My name is Hannah Morgan. I think I’m your birth mother.” So begins this powerful memoir by a young woman whose life changes dramatically when she receives a phone call from someone at once a stranger and her most intimate relation.

Saffian’s riveting story of painful self-discovery and newfound joy is unique in its reversal of the usual adoption narrative: here, the biological parents seek out the adoptee. Weaving together letters, journal entries, memories and reflections, Saffian tells of her adoption, her adoptive mother’s death six years later, and her upbringing in a loving family. She learns that her biological parents ended up marrying and having other children. She is thus faced with an entire family to whom she is genetically linked. Saffian’s boldly honest account reaches a moving climax with their reunion, three years after the first phone call. Along the way, it raises thorny questions: What is a family? Can we have more than one? What is the line between parental concern and intrusion? Is it hypocritical to be a pro-choice adoptee? How do nature and nurture work together to form a person’s identity?

By turns earnest and playful, Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found is sure to touch readers everywhere who have grappled with who they are.

---

About the Author: Sarah Saffian is a former reporter for the New York Daily News and has also written for the Village Voice, Interview, Harper’s Bazaar, and Mirabella. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and lives in her native New York City.

Few people know that North Korea and South Korea were a single nation until July 1945 as WWII was ending in the Pacific. That was when an American committee, to prevent Joseph Stalin’s Red Army from taking all of Korea, drew a line at the 38th Parallel separating the north from the south. In early 1946 the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission was formed, to work with the U.S.S.R. to find a way to reunite North and South Korea under a single government. My father, Major Warren W. McAllister, U.S. Army, was Secretary to the American delegation. This memoir, tracks Dad’s war years through his service in military intelligence and military government during the Okinawa campaign and into Korea where he served with the Joint Commission and went on to rebuild the casualty insurance part of South Korea’s economy. The jade locket, for which the memoir is named, was given to Dad in thanks by four South Korean insurance companies after he was ordered home. The memoir begins with my father’s birth on a small Iowa farm in 1911, and ends after his death in 1991. It is also my own story as Dad’s adopted daughter, and documents my powerful attachment to him from infancy—shown in my recently obtained adoption papers. It includes my late-in-life curiosity about my birth parents, and the way I at last obtained my adoption file. This memoir is based on Dad’s military file of orders and other military documents, plus letters, photos, and other documents.

Janani or mother as the creator of life, defines this narrative collection. The book brings together autobiographical writings of women from many walks of life noted authors, artists, academics to share their experiences of being mothers, daughters or both. The accounts combine memory and nostalgia in nuanced detail, making each narrative heart-warming and at times, profoundly challenging. The contributors abandon their public faces to provide humane, intimate and compelling narratives. The collection includes accounts of adoptive motherhood, stepmothering and single motherhood. On the One hand, the reader encounters the wrenching pain of an abortion, while on the other, the choice of a women determined not to be a mother. The Janani stories vividly explore the whole gamut of motherhood. Immensely readable, the volume has a wide appeal not just for mothers and daughters, but for fathers and sons as well, in fact for all those who celebrate the rare gift of human relationships.

From the Publisher: “Short was more than a protege; to all practical purposes he was a son,” writes Dumas Malone in his biography of Thomas Jefferson. Yet William Short has remained a shadowy figure in the history of the early American republic. He was a founder of Phi Beta Kappa at the College of William and Mary and a member of the Virginia Council of State, and he served as Jefferson’s secretary in France and became chargé d’affaires when his mentor returned to America. Later he was minister to the Netherlands, Spain, and Russia. Luck cheated Short of fame, although he was one of the most successful diplomats after Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. His astuteness during the war crisis of 1789-1790 went unrecognized. Bad transatlantic communications led the Washington administration to think he was making no headway in Spain, and he was replaced by Thomas Pinckney. Short’s last humiliation was the Senate’s refusal to confirm his recess appointment as minister to Russia. The great romance of Short’s life was with Rosalie, widow of Duc Louis Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, who was assassinated in 1792. From 1796 to 1802 she and Short lived as husband and wife, but she refused to marry him or accompany him to America. When she married a French nobleman in 1809, Short was crushed. The correspondence between Jefferson and Short is as important in revealing the thoughts of our third president as is Jefferson’s correspondence with John Adams. George Shackelford’s study provides new insights on the lives of many figures of the early republic and on this country’s diplomatic relations with European powers.

---

About the Author: George Green Shackelford is professor emeritus at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

From the Publisher: A mother and her child, lost and then found again after four decades: this extraordinary story of love, loss, and reunion is told in alternating voices by the two women, each relating her own powerful experience. For the mother, it’s the tale of an unhappy marriage followed by betrayal, a pregnancy of uncertain paternity, and the heartrending decision to give up her newborn. The daughter’s search begins 40 years later, as she slowly, painstakingly, stitches together her story. These intertwined tales give us two unforgettable points of view of a remarkable journey-and of the multiple meanings of motherhood.

---

About the Author: Bunny Crumpacker was the author of seven books, including The Sex Life of Food.

J.S. Picariello is a copywriter for ad agencies and magazines including New York, People, Parenting, and Reader’s Digest.

from the Dust Jacket: Sinners go to: HELL.

Rightchuss go to: HEAVEN.

The end is neer: REPENT.

This here is: JESUS LAND.

So say the signs on the edge of a cornfield in rural Indiana, circa 1985. But for Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother, David, “Jesus Land” stretched from their parents’ fundamentalist home, past the hostilities of high school, and deep into Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. For these two teenagers—brother and sister, black and white—the 1980s were a trial by fire.

In this riveting memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Sheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence—high=school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere—under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe.

This brutal, prison-like “Christian boot camp” demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins—sins that few of them are aware of having committed.

Julia and David’s determination to make it through with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice. Jesus Land is, on every page , a keenly moving ode to the sustaining power of love, and rebellion, and the dream of a perfect family.

---

About the Author: Julia Scheeres has written for the Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Wired. She has twice been a finalist for journalism awards presented by the Annenberg School for Communication, and once for an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. She lives in San Francisco, California.

This is my story, an average kid growing up in an abusive world of foster homes, going through addiction, homelessness, jails and prison, having a rough time dealing with life itself and a heartbreaking divorce. I’m not anything special, I just want to let kids and people of all ages, to be able to relate and know that they’re more of us with the same story out there. I’m writing this book, not because I have been told I should write my story, but for my own therapy, which is important to my recovery as an alcoholic and addict, as it can be for the stepchild that suffers from a life of abuse, alcoholism or drug addiction. I have been blessed with a good memory, and the knowledge of how God has been working in my life. I can remember very clearly from moment to moment, but for time and reading sake, I didn’t write about every little thing that happened, but it’s pretty darn close! In this book I mainly keep the focus on myself as much as possible and as I seen life through my own eyes and not others, at how my drinking progressed and how hard my life came to be, because of it; there may be an exception or so with the step parents and step sisters or brothers through out my life. I had a rough childhood, but not as bad as some kids I met and were friends with during my life, but I experienced more than enough to understand how a hurting stepchild feels. I’m honored to be able to share and hopefully touch someone’s heart out there in this crazy world we live in, and grew up in, also for the ones that have a hard concept of family and are alone in life. Men, women and children alike, trying to fit in and just wanting to be happy in their lives. Asking the question’s I ask myself, “why me?” how did I get the short end of the stick? Where did I go wrong, and what did I do to deserve this? I once blamed God for my misfortunes, but I know now that God has been keeping a strong caring hand on me, even when I really didn’t noticed that he was guiding me along, no matter how deep and dark it became in my life. I hope you enjoy the stories of my life and you can have a sense of being there with me, maybe you had similar times and events that you experienced in the same fashion? It’s not everyday you get to read about another foster kids life and how you can walk along side with the abuse, addiction and the everyday heartache of abandonment, or the sinking feeling if anybody is ever going to care about you. But, there are good times though, and there were funny episodes too, not everything in my life has been bad, and I hope that the good times in this book will cause you to find yours!

From the Dust Jacket: Jody is a true story of one man’s search for his wife’s past—and their own future. It is the actual account—poignant, powerful, gripping—of Jerry Hulse’s desperate search, racing against the clock, to discover his wife’s true identity before she undergoes potentially fatal brain surgery. Like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, Jody was an adopted child, hidden in a cloak of secrecy, unaware of her natural parents, ignorant even of her nationality, her past erased almost as if her birth had never happened.

When Jody begins to suffer from alarming and highly dangerous dizzy spells, her doctors discover a blockage near the brain that could bring instant death at any time. Only surgery can save her life. From a genetic viewpoint, the doctors are in the dark, and they need a medical history of her natural parents.

Her husband, a newspaper writer and former investigative reporter, has only eight days to find her parents and obtain that medical history before Jody reaches the operating table. Only eight days and not a single lead.

Jerry Hulse’s search leads him halfway across a continent and—further still—back into his own marriage to discover that part of Jody he could never reach, and. to find the true bonds of their love.

The truth of Jody’s story speaks to all of us, for it is, as the author observes, “the story of every human being who has ever wondered about the heart’s journey home.”

---

About the Author: Jerry Hulse is a reporter and journalist for the Los Angeles Times, having worked as a feature writer, travel columnist, and investigative reporter. Winner of several newspaper and magazine writing awards, he has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism.

From the Dust Jacket: Josephine Baker once told Jean-Claude Baker that after she died he would discover the truth about her. Now, after two decades of exhaustive worldwide research, he has done just that, but the truth turns out to be much more fascinating—and shocking—than the legends that have attached themselves to her.

Here’s the neglected child starving for attention in the slums of St. Louis, the uninhibited chorus girl who shamelessly stole the spotlight from the stars—and became the sensation of Europe.

Josephine was the self-proclaimed Universal Mother, who gathered children from many countries, the expatriate who was erratic about the civil rights movement, and the outrageous entertainer who dared to become the first black sex symbol of this century.

Jean-Claude Baker collected the voices of men and women who, over the decades, shared the stage with Josephine. Here are the tales of the great impresarios and showmen who toasted her name from Paris to Rio, of her friends, her enemies, her servants, her lovers, and her family.

Though she never knew her father, she always claimed to be of mixed racial heritage. She was a secret agent; she was kept by princes and sultans. She hated being black and never forgave white people for what they had done to her race.

In this rich and evocative biography, spiced with never-before-revealed facts and anecdotes Josephine Baker comes to life again. Through the monumental efforts of a man who has devoted a good part of his life to her memory, we see, at last, the complex woman who was one o our century’s most captivating celebrities—the one who broke all the rules.

---

About the Author: Jean-Claude Baker was born in Dijon, France. At fourteen, while working as a bellhop in Paris, he met Josephine Baker. Her bold inspiration led him to pursue a remarkably colorful career that has included success as a nightclub owner, television producer, and restaurateur. Mr. Baker first came to the United States on Josephine Baker’s final American tour in 1973. He lives in New York City.

Chris Chase lives in New York City.

In your hands, you hold a piece of my heart. I’ve opened a door into my soul that I sealed off a long time ago, in hopes that it will bring peace and empowerment to others. I know from my own experience as a foster child what it feels like to live in fear, and to grow up with constant feelings of abandonment and self-doubt. I’m going to take you through my journey, beginning with my entry into the foster system at age seven. The questions I pose to you throughout this journalcome from some of the writings in my own journals.Together, we are going to get to the root of the problems you struggle with. I want to instill within you the hope that pulled me through some difficult times such as two brain surgeries, and lead me to a much more peaceful place. www.fosteringhopeforamerica.com.

From the Publisher: All the stories in this volume are “free-standing” short stories, but the first eight can be regarded as “sequels” to the author’s previous work, Deja Views of an Aging Orphan since they pick up on characters and themes first introduced in that book. The remaining stories are rooted in the United States, albeit in different cities as the author climbs the ladder of greater responsibilities in his social work career.

---

About the Author: Sam George Arcus was born on October19,1921 in Brooklyn, NY. Following death of mother in 1929, he spent 12 years at the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers, NY. Arcus obtained his BSS degree from City College of NY in 1947 and an MSW from Columbia University in 1949. He worked as social worker in family service agencies and Jewish Community Centers throughout the country and finally settled in Tucson, AZ, where he remains employed by the Pima Council on Aging.

---

By the Same Author: Deja Views of an Aging Orphan (2000); The Hebrew National Orphan Home: Memories of Orphanage Life (co-edited with Ira A. Greenberg and Richard G. Safran; 2001, Bergin & Garvey); Kola: Episodes in the Life of a Siberian Husky (2005); and The Affluent American Dog: and Other Tails (2007).

From the Back Cover: On a summer evening in 1976, Coreen Thomas, a 21-year-old Carrier Native from Stony Creek reservation in her ninth month of pregnancy, was struck and killed by a car driven by a man named Richard Redekop on the outskirts of Vanderhoof, British Columbia. The resulting inquest into what might have been another small town tragedy turned into an investigation of implicit racial tensions that surfaced not only on the back roads between young people but also in the courtroom, revealing a dual system of justice that treated whites and Natives differently. It is a personal and heartwarming story of a timely issue that strikes at the heart of the Canadian conscience--how the justice system has in many ways failed our Native people.

---

About the Author: Bridget Moran is the award-winning author of the bestselling Stoney Creek Woman: The Story of Mary John.

From the Publisher: Just Chris is more than a boy telling of his life. It is a story that surely will bring encouragement to many who face challenges, feel worthless due to some physical handicap, or face rejection in anyway. It is a story of hope, courage and steadfast love. Christopher has an exciting life ahead of him, and he will fly to heights that even he cannot imagine at this time. A great read, from a great young man.

---

About the Author: Christopher Shiveley Welch is the son of Debra Shiveley Welch, who tells her own story in A Very Special Child (2005) and Son of My Soul (2007).

Even in America—“the land of milk and honey”—there exists an icy chill of loneliness and helpless desperation felt only by an orphaned child. Cheryl Decker was one of those children. Orphaned at the young age of seven, Cheryl tells of personal and redeeming Life Lessons she learned from her early years on through adulthood. She speaks of how multiple tragedies and challenges in her life shaped her thoughts and actions. Written in an easy-flowing, narrative style, her message provides a revealing insight into the mind of an innocent, young orphan girl, desperately seeking to find her way in the world—seeking to recover that precious place called “family.”