In this book, you will walk with me as I go down some very troublesome paths that are both painful and inspiring. You will walk with me as if you were there for the experience yourself. I was physically, emotionally, mentally and sexually abused as a child. I will share with you my pain and thoughts of being abused as a child, through a child’s eyes. What it felt like to tell the authorities. What it was like to be adopted for the second time. And what it was like to finally have a happy life. Just when I was starting to put all the pain behind me and get on with my life, I started going deaf. As if that wasn’t enough for me to bear, I am now dealing with depression and anxiety disorders. Through all of this, I am a survivor, ad I credit my faith in God for getting me through all the rough paths in my lifetime. I believe in the power of prayer, and I believe that He answers all prayers in his time frame. Sit back, as I take you on a quick journey through my troublesome life. It is definitely filled with emotion. When you finish this book, you will be both mad at the statistics of child abuse, and inspired yourself to keeping the faith. About the Author: Terri Stonecipher resides in Northern Michigan with her husband of 20 years, and her two teenage children. She currently stays home and takes care of her family. She has had many articles published, but this is her first book that she has ever written. She was inspired to write the book, when one night she seen what she now describes as angels. It was time for her to remain silent no longer. It was now time for her to tell her story, in hopes of inspiring someone else.

It’s 1944. A little boy and his sister find themselves the wards of strangers in a cavernous children’s home. Their mother assures them that their stay will be but a few months. Nearly six years later what they thought was to be a “stay” ends with their placement in a foster home. While this sounds like a chapter written by Charles Dickens in one of his darker moods, it isn’t. Looking back after a half century, that “little boy,” D.W. Rozelle, remembers his years at “the Home” as the best years of his tumultuous boyhood. Over 25 drawings by distinguished artist C.A. Grooms lend Rozelle’s flashbacks a startling visual impact.

From the Dust Jacket: Well, 1983 certainly wasn’t boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father’s mysterious death, their glamorous soap-opera-star mother’s cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgotten-about Chilean exchange student—together.

All that changed with the death of their mother. While nineteen-year-old Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblings—Liz, sixteen; Dan, fourteen; and Diana, eight—were each dispatched to a different set of family friends. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued, Amanda headed for college in New York City and immersed herself in an *80s world of alternative music and drugs. Liz, living with the couple for whom she babysat, followed in Amanda’s footsteps until high school graduation when she took a job in Norway as a nanny. Mischievous, rebellious Dan bounced from guardian to boarding school and back again, getting deeper into trouble and drugs. And Diana, the red-haired baby of the family, was given a new life and identity and told to forget her past. But Diana’s siblings refused to forget her—or let her go.

Told in the alternating voices of the four siblings, their poignant, harrowing story of unbreakable bonds unfolds wiuu ferocious emotion. Despite the Welch children’s wrenching loss and subsequent separation, they retained the resilience and humor that both their mother and father endowed them with—growing up as lost souls, taking disastrous turns along the way, but eventually coming out right side up. The kids are not only all right; they’re back together.

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About the Author: Diana Welch is a writer living in Austin, Texas, where she is a curator for the multimedia label Monofonus Press, a reporter for the Austin Chronicle, and a member of the band Storm Shelter. This is her first book.

Liz Welch is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for Glamour, Real Simple, and Inc. Her work has also appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, the New York Times, and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband. This is her first book too.

Dan Welch works as a location manager and scout for film and television. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Amanda Welch makes a living gardening and making soaps and bath products marketed as Grubby Girl. She lives in central Virginia with her husband.

From the Dust Jacket: The story of Kiri Te Kanawa’s rise to fame from a Maori background in New Zealand to the world of international opera—now acclaimed as one of the great operatic stars, she is also known to millions for her singing at the royal wedding in 1981.

Kiri Te Kanawa is the great operatic discovery of our time. In 1971 when, as an unknown singer from New Zealand, she sang the role of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden, it was clear that a star of immense talent had been revealed.

This biography traces her life from early days as a Maori girl from New Zealand’s North Island, the struggles and difficulties of her operatic training when she came to Britain having abandoned a flourishing Antipodean career as a popular singer and recording artist. Then came her eventual overnight success, first at Covent Garden, then at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in Otello, and her subsequent successes in the world’s great opera houses. It also looks at her widely admired performance in Joseph Losey’s controversial film of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

The people who were instrumental in helping her are well known names—Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge, Colin Davis, Georg Solti, Peter Hall, John Tooley. The honour paid to her in being invited to sing at the marriage of Prince Charles and the Lady Diana Spencer in St Paul’s Cathedral brought her to the notice and admiration of countless television viewers throughout the world.

Kiri Te Kanawa is not only beautiful in voice and appearance; she has an irresistible vivacity and sense of humour offstage. She is married, the devoted mother of two young children and is a keen enthusiast on the golf course. This book follows the musical development of her voice but also tells the human story behind the career of an exceptional singer who has won the hearts of millions.

In the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 1982, Kiri Te Kanawa was created a Dame of the British Empire.

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About the Author: David Fingleton first became interested in music through going to Ernest Read Children’s Concerts while at his prep school, and went on to discover a passion for opera. After reading modern history at Oxford he began to practise at the Criminal Bar and took up musical journalism as a working hobby. In 1970 he created an opera column for Tatler and Bystander which he continued to write until 1979. He was an Associate Editor of Music and Musicians and has written for the Guardian and the Evening News, where his Music Man column appeared every Friday during the last year of the paper’s life. He has occasionally given radio talks on musical topics and is Stage Design Correspondent of Arts Review. He left the Bar to become a Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate in 1980 but still finds sufficient time to write about music. He has admired Kiri Te Kanawa’s work since first hearing her sing in 1969 and has known her for nearly ten years. David Fingleton is married to the arts journalist.

This is a beautiful autobiography about a black girl from Texas who was adopted by a pair of white teachers from Exeter, Maine and therefore landed up as a black girl who was only one of three people from non-white American backgrounds in a small village with the further isolation of a speech impediment and an academic background in a largely “blue collar” environment. It covers her journey from Texas to childhood in Maine to an English teaching job in Beijing, China. It shows the contrast in attitudes/xenophobia between the Americans and the Chinese to race and also vegetarianism. It is a great look at the Chinese mentality from a westerner’s point of view.

What is more important? Putting a monstrous serial killer of children to death...or finding and bringing home the small victims he made disappear? “I inhaled their last breaths,” Kondro revealed to the author with whom he corresponded for two years before his death in prison. He wanted her to know “how a good kid becomes a serial killer of young girls ... Look what I have done—I took a whole community’s children.” And for decades a whole community “never told.”

From Taylor Alumni Magazine, February 1959 (News of Taylor University, Upland, Indiana): Lad with Summer Eyes is an artistically written human interest story of the life of a very promising boy who came from a very unfortunate background into the Christian atmosphere of Grace Children’s Home, Henderson, Nebraska, which the Barkmans were directing at that time. The book relates the transformation which took place in the boy’s life when he became a Christian. His remarkable mind and friendly spirit absorbed the Word of God and he showed glowing promise for the future. His accidental death at the age of fifteen seemed to end that career, but in this moving biography his life continues its testimony to the saving power of God in Christ.

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About the Author: Professor Paul Barkman, now in his third year as assistant professor of Psychology and Religion at Taylor, graduated from Bethel College, Kansas, in 1943. He received the S.T.B. degree from New York Biblical Seminary in 1946, and was awarded the M.A. degree in Mental Hygiene from New York University the same year. Currently, he is completing work for the Ph.D. degree in the field of Human Relations.

Frieda Barkman attended Bethel College and taught in the elementary schools for three years. She also received a B.R.E. degree from Biblical Seminary.

From the Dust Jacket: During an amazing career spanning more than two decades, Scott Hamilton has literally transformed modern figure skating. His flawless performances set a new standard for competition and won him the Olympic gold medal. His universal appeal and popularity as a professional skater helped bring the sport to prime time TV. And his work as one of today’s most engaging network commentators has made Olympic skating one of the most watched events in television history. More than that, he has earned the admiration of people everywhere, who have been inspired by his courage, his tenacity, and his spirit in the face of adversity. Now, for the first time, Scott Hamilton shares a lifetime of reaching for the stars—and always beating the odds.

Scott vividly recounts the early hurdles thrown in his path: a childhood spent in and out of hospitals with a disease that stunted his growth, the wrenching decision to leave home at age thirteen to train with other Olympic hopefuls, the pain of watching his beloved mother die from breast cancer, and the frustration of chasing more successful rivals like Scott Cramer and David Santee.

But nothing could stop the scrappy kid from Bowling Green, Ohio from giving it his best. By the late 1970s, it was clear that Scott was finally coming into his own as a skater. Yet no one could have predicted that he would soon dominate the sport by winning seventeen successive competitions, including a total of eight national and world championships—an unprecedented four-year streak that culminated in 1984 when he skated away with Olympic gold.

Thirteen years later, Scott was still doing what he loved best, only now he was a busy professional skater thrilling audiences at sold out stadium events, performing on television specials, and commentating far CBS Sports. Then, on March 15, 1997, in the middle of a Stars on Ice tour, Scott’s whole world was shaken by devastating news: doctors tod him he had testicular cancer that had spread to his abdomen. Suddenly, the gutsy skater who had faced a lifetime of uphill battles found himself in the toughest competition of his life, and more determined thon ever to win.

Landing It: My Life On and Off the Ice is the inspiring, moving story of an athlete fiercely dedicated to the sport he loves; a true champion who shares with his many fans the highs and lows, victories and defeats, of his remarkable life, including his brave battle against cancer and triumphant return to professional skating just seven months after he was diagnosed with the disease.

With candor and insight, he discusses the controversial subject of judging; how the sport has changed, for better and worse, in the two decades since he began competing; and how the new generation of champions, like Tora Lipinski and Michelle Kwan, is shaping the future of figure skating. Scott also gives followers of the sport a rare glimpse inside the world of superstar figure skaters with warm, often humorous personal stories about his close friends and colleagues, including Kristi Yamaguchi, Paul Wylie, Brian Boitano, Kurt Browning, Rosalynn Sumners, Sergei Grinkov, Ekaterina Gordeeva, Jayne Torvill, Christopher Dean, and Katarina Witt.

Olympic Gold medalist, four-time World Champion, four-time United States Champion, producer, performer, broadcaster, and spokesperson for cancer research, Scott Hamilton is more than a survivor. He’s a hero in the best sense of the word—the kind that has won the love and support of millions around the globe.

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By the Same Author: The Great Eight: How to Be Happy (Even When You Have Every Reason to be Miserable) by Scott Hamilton, with Ken Baker (2009, Thomas Nelson).

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Compiler’s Note: The Great Eight is not, strictly speaking, autobiographical, but does occasionally reference Hamilton’s status as an adoptee in context. Other books relating to Scott Hamilton’s life include Scott Hamilton: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Life and Competitive Times of America’s Favorite Figure Skater by Michael Steere (1985, St. Martin’s Press) and Scott Hamilton: Overcoming Adversity by Kristine Brennan (gr 4-7) (1999, Chelsea House).

From the Dust Jacket: For years, Korean adoptee Jane Jeong Trenka tried to be the ideal daughter. She was always polite, earned perfect grades, and excelled as a concert pianist. She went to church with her American family in small-town Minnesota and learned not to ask about the mother who had given her away. Then, while she was far from home on a music scholarship, living in a big city for the first time, one of her fellow university students began to follow her, his obsession ultimately escalating into a plot for her murder.

In radiant prose that ranges seamlessly from pure lyricism to harrowing realism, Trenka recounts repeated close encounters with her stalker and the years of repressed questions that her ordeal awakened. Determined not to be defined by her stalker’s twisted assessment of her worth, she struck out in search of her own identity—free of western stereotypes of geishas and good girls. Doing so, however, meant confronting her American family and fighting the bureaucracy at the agency that had arranged for her adoption.

Jane Jeong Trenka dares to ask fundamental questions about the nature of family and identity. Are we who we decide to be, or who other people would make us? What is this bond more powerful than words, this unspoken language of blood? To find out, Trenka must reacquaint herself with her mother and sisters in Seoul and devise a way to blend two distinct cultures into one she can call her own. The Language of Blood is a one-of-a-kind coming-of-age story, seared into the memory by indelible images and unforgettable prose. This is a poetic tour-deforce by an essential new voice in Asian American literature.

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About the Author: Jane Jeong Trenka graduated magna cum laude from Augsburg College in Minneapolis with degrees in music performance and English literature. She has at various times been a gas station attendant, a sheet music salesperson, a lounge pianist, a dishwasher, and a music instructor. She has been awarded the Brenda Ueland Prize, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a Loft Creative Non-Fiction Award, and a SASE/Jerome Award. The Language of Blood is her first book.

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By the Same Author: Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (Ed., with Julia Chinyere Oparah & Sun Yung Shin; 2006, South End Press) and Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea (2009, Graywolf Press).

These twelve essays span nearly twenty years of research and activism that chronicle one man’s search for his family. Together, they explore the concept of personal identity from the perspective of someone who was erased completely by adoption in The State of New York.

Five siblings are abandoned one after another by a monstrously cruel mother. They grow up as meal tickets in separate, abusive foster homes, always wondering why other kids have a family and they have none. Somehow, all five survive. Somehow, all five—entirely on their own—go on to build happy lives, find each other, discover their real family, and have the last laughs.

From the Publisher: It’s the same reflection I’ve seen in mirrors for decades, only now it’s different. I don’t know who the face belongs to. The confusion swimming in those eyes, which they say are windows to the soul, takes away my breath and breaks my heart. In April 2003 I first hear that I was switched at birth. The mother who takes me home sees the mistake as soon as I’m placed into the wrong woman’s arms—her arms. Many close relatives have always known that I’m only in the family by accident. I try to wrap my head around such a life-changing mix-up, and how and why it has been kept secret from me for fifty years. The family secret I randomly discovered would challenge and demolish my most basic understanding of the world, which is to say everything I needed to know before I started kindergarten, facts as pre-ordained and pre-programmed as my name and who my parents are. At age fifty my life had been not so much filled with accomplishments and stability as with variety, change, and challenge. It was at that point in my life’s journey, the mid-century mark, that I made the discovery of a lifetime, my transformational event. I had been switched at birth.

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Compiler’s Note: The same text has been subsequently issued under various titles by the author, stylized as second or third editions, which may (or may not) reflect revisions or changes from the original: Adrift: How Discovering I Was Switched at Birth Changed My Life at Fifty (2012) and The Wrong Family: A Switched at Birth Memoir (2013, CRS Press [Kindle eBook]).

From the Back Cover: Susan was forty-three years old before she learned the truth that she had long suspected: that she was adopted. Then came the long, involved search for her biological family roots, a roller-coaster of emotions that uncovered secret after secret, revealing truth after truth.

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About the Author: Susan Bennett is the national secretary and on the board of directors of American Adoption Congress, as well as the Southwest Regional Director of the organization and editor of The Beacon. She is also a board member and librarian for Search Triad, Inc., in Arizona and a producer on the documentary film project, denied. She lives in Gilbert, AZ, with her husband, Mike.

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 were answers. Why was she so different from the people she lived with? Why were her most natural artistic impulses disdained and discouraged regularly by her adopted mother? Why? Why? Profound sadness consumed the young woman, and as she sought her true identity, she dodged a sexually abusive older brother, a lecherous father, and incessant pressure from her mother to develop into the WASP image she treasured. Suffering PTSD and encountering immobilizing triggers around every corner, Melinda soldiered on. From 1947 to the present, join the author on a road to truth, redemption, and most of all—answers.

From the Back Cover: Legs of Iron is a biographical depiction of one woman’s fight for a fulfilling and independent life in the face of enormous obstacles. Her dream is for the reader to get a glimpse of one disabled person’s mind, hopes, ambition, feelings and ability to love; then decidedly come to understand that the mind, not the external features, is a truer measure of the person.

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About the Author: Pauline Wiltshire (Co-Author)

Mother, Author and Activist for the disabled in a wholesome society.

“Retarded” is how my first passport labelled me. Now it is “disabled.” Which describes me more accurately?

My hope is to help society to start to understand that I do not want them to apologise for my disability, or look away embarrassingly when I am around. I am who I am and will be the best I can. No pity. No bad treatment. No dehumanising. Is that too much to expect from an intelligent and civilised western society? Another of my dreams is that this book will help my son to ignore society’s pressures and start to feel comfortable with his mother. Read on and tell me if I am expecting too much.

Dr. Albert A.C. Waite (Bio-Author)

Scientist, Educator and Author of such works as:

• Training Needs for Senior Staff in Independent Schools

• Who Made the World

• Let the Earth Speak of God’s Creation

• GOD.COM 1: Inspirational Impact and

• GOD.COM 2: Inspirational Impact!

The life sketches of Pauline Wiltshire is captured by this bio-author, who has focused his gaze to portray this powerful and moving story, armed with his own vivid experiences of life in rural Jamaica and metropolitan Britain.

Biography of author and evangelist who is also Billy Graham’s brother-in-law.

From the Dust Jacket: “It is said that you can’t choose your relatives but some of my family did. Three generations were adopted, and adopted in three distinct ways.”

150 Station Road, Wheeldon Mill—a short stride across the Chesterfield Canal in the heart of Derbyshire—was home to the Nash family and their corner shop, which served a small mining community with everything from Brasso and Dolly Blue to cheap dress rings and bright sugary sweets.

But just as this was no ordinary home, theirs was no ordinary family. Lynn Knight tells the remarkable story of the three adoptions within it: of her great-grandfather, a fairground boy, given away when his parents left for America in 1865; of her great-aunt, rescued from an Industrial School in 1909; and of her mother, adopted as a baby in 1930 and brought to Chesterfield from London.

Full of light, life and colour, spanning three generations and two world wars, this memoir weaves a rich portrait of a community and of family love and loyalty regardless of blood ties.

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About the Author: Lynn Knight was born in Derbyshire and lives in London. A writer, editor and lecturer, she is the editor of two collections of short stories, and author of the biography Clarice Cliff.

From the Dust Jacket: When Paul Arnott was a small boy his mother gave him sugar and melted butter for a sore throat, and every meal ended with hot sponge and custard. His first love was the magnificent green and gold tin of faux honey from Silvertown: Tate & Lyle’s Golden Syrup.

Living life as a constant enthusiast, an occasional connoisseur and a relentless collector of sweet sensations has led him to sample the differences between Vienna’s many sachertortes, take tea at Buckingham Palace and visit Hershey, the town the chocolate magnate built for his workers.

But this is also the story of a shape-shifter: a man who has grown horizontally and begun to wobble at the sides. Yet Paul refuses to feel regret for the trail of cake crumbs that led to a season as Father Christmas--no padding required. He contends that, contrary to what some would have us believe, eating cake isn’t a sin, it’s an indulgence. And the experiences that cause every extra pound should be revered and celebrated.

Funny, nostalgic and full of surprising stories, Let Me Eat Cake is a memoir of a life lived sweetly by a man who plumped for pleasure. It will leave you feeling deliciously full.

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About the Author: Paul Arnott is a writer, producer and journalist. He lives in Devon with his wife and four children.

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By the Same Author: A Good Likeness: A Personal Story of Adoption (2000, Little, Brown).

From the Back Cover: Be surprised, be uplifted by this inspiring true story of tragedy, courage, love and forgiveness. And by a letter from Alabama that changed everything.

Take a journey to a time before instant and constant communication—a time when people who matter to you can simply disappear. Finding them can require perseverance, resourcefulness, luck, or perhaps a miracle. Such is the story of Letter from Alabama.

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About the Author: David Workman is an American writer and editor. He was a journalist for daily newspapers in Ohio and Washington State, and wrote a column published in newspapers around the Pacific Northwest. David entered public service as a communications director for several state agencies in Washington. He was executive editor of books and websites on natural resources, environment, and social and health services.

From the Publisher: The Letter Never Sent is a collection of letters written by Korean adoptees to their birth parents and is published in both English and Korean languages. By publishing The Letter Never Sent, IECEF hopes to provide an additional unique space for adoptees to share their writing, and to express their thoughts, experiences, and feelings as they relate to birth family. Ultimately, we hope the book will be helpful to adoptees that are searching for their birth families. We also believe in the importance of challenging the secrecy and social stigma that has traditionally been attached to adoption. We hope that by doing this, it will eventually lead to more open discussion about adoption in Korean society and we believe that there is a critical role Korean adoptees can play in this effort.

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About the Author: The Adoptees’ Homecoming Support Center at the International Educational and Cultural Exchange Foundation (IECEF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing services to Korean adoptees who want to visit or live in Korea. IECEF assists adoptees who are searching for their birth families. IECEF published The Letter Never Sent I and II as part of the ongoing effort to help support adoptees in their search for birth family.

From the Publisher: The Letter Never Sent is a collection of letters and poems written by Korean adoptees to their birth families and published in both English and Korean. The letters express the complexity of emotions related to birth family and vividly present the lingering questions that adoptees often carry throughout their lives regarding family and loss. Letters from adoptees and one birth family that successfully searched for and reunited with family members are also included in the book.

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About the Author: The Adoptees’ Homecoming Support Center at the International Educational and Cultural Exchange Foundation (IECEF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing services to Korean adoptees who want to visit or live in Korea. IECEF assists adoptees who are searching for their birth families. IECEF published The Letter Never Sent I and II as part of the ongoing effort to help support adoptees in their search for birth family.

Letters from the Heart is a collection of letters by adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents written to Adoption Triangle Ministry in response to Sandy Musser’s guest appearance on the 700 Club and PTL during the early 1980s.

Letters to a Silhouette are the accounts of the life of a foster youth and his first-hand witnessing of crimes in foster care. His hopes of finding his biological mother after she left him in a hospital the day he was born.

A memoir, with fictional re-enactment. Joanne is raised by her father Jack and mother Delores, who is confined to a wheelchair. Life is difficult for all and when a relative tells Joanne she is adopted, a suspicion is born. She senses tension between her parents and uneasiness whenever around other family members. Later in life she has many memories of unsettling experiences for which she needs answers. She is driven to solve the mystery; along with Cousin Liza, they launch a “project” to find her true mother. Joanne’s frustration is revealed in Letters to Heaven; inquiring, apologetic, and entertaining, she beseeches her parents to listen to her concerns and aggravation. For answers, Joanne and Cousin Liza confront an array of aunts and uncles. Because of family loyalty they insist Joanne is mistaken, or they say nothing at all; conveniently they burst into tears, become angry, or fall asleep. Convinced relatives are covering up a shameful event, Joanne obtains scientific proof; even when DNA evidence is presented? they will not budge.

The need to know one’s roots, and therefore one’s self, is universal. In Letters To Muriel, Helen Deachman undertakes an exploration of her past in search of an identity that links one generation to another. They met in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1935, just before their fourth birthdays, and developed a friendship that would last their entire lives. Almost sixty years later, following the death of their adoptive mother; Helen Deachman began to trace the identity of her birth mother, to learn where the music came from. In this lilting collection of forty letters to her best friend Muriel, she records the ups and downs, the revelations and dead-ends, as her five-year journey of discovery leads her from Port Arthur to Winnipeg, and to Scotland and back.

From the Dust Jacket: Like millions of adoptees, Amy Dean agonized over the decision to search for her biological mother. Although a successful author, she suffered from a low self-image and the feeling of being unwanted. Haunted by the need to solve the mystery of her past, she craved information about why she was adopted and about her genetic and medical history. Letters to My Birthmother is a moving, introspective account of how she made the decision to search, of finding her birthmother, and what happened afterward.

Through this book, written as a series of unmailed letters to her birthmother, Amy Dean has tried to come to terms with some of the confusing and conflicting emotions that have dominated her heart and mind since she found her birthmother. Though painful, this journey has brought her new and profound understanding of her past and opened the door to a more fulfilling future.

Letters to My Birthmother is a compelling story. Adopted as a baby, Amy Dean was taken from her new parents and placed in a foster home for two years because of her adoptive mother’s alcoholism. Then her adoptive parents divorced when she was seven years old, and her father remarried. She never saw her adoptive mother again. At age 31, torn by the lack of a past and the need to establish her identity, she began the search for her birthmother, and found her three months later, living less than an hour away.

By sharing her emotions and her experiences, Amy Dean speaks in a powerful, thought-provoking way to adoptees, adoptive children, and those who gave up their children. Her story is sure to help them in their own struggles to come to terms with their past.

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About the Author: Amy E. Dean is the author of a number of bestselling books for adult children from dysfunctional families, including Night Light (which has sold more than 200,000 copies), Once Upon a Time: Stories from Adult Children, and Making Changes: How Adult Children Can Have Healthier, Happier Relationships. She is a frequent lecturer on the subject of healing and recovery from a dysfunctional past. She lives in Maynard, Massachusetts.

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By the Same Author: Caring for the Family Soul: Enriching the Family Experience through Love, Respect, Intimacy, and Trust (1996, Berkley Books), among others.

An accomplished singer who performed the national anthem at Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium, Cheryl was adopted at four months old by Raymond and Elaine Kain of New York. Her father died in 1984; she became very close with her mother in the years to follow, despite living across the country. Wanting to spend time with her mother while mom was still healthy, Cheryl made the difficult decision to uproot herself by moving to small-town life on Cape Cod, leaving behind her friends and work in Los Angeles. Six years later, when her mom died on August 13, 2009, Cheryl was devastated—she’d not only lost her mother, but her best friend and roommate. She found herself turning 48, suddenly single, let go from her job, and without a map for the future. Cheryl begins writing letters to her mother as an attempt to keep the conversation going, hanging on to the one daily ritual she looks forward to, while unflinchingly visiting the dark caverns of grief, despair and heartbreak. She becomes an accidental poet and painter, expressing her “messy” feelings that can be difficult to talk about. During the first year of acute grief, she took solace in the smallest of blessings, a year of not having to be fashionably dressed, and an unimpeachable way out of unwanted social invites. After a few months of writing letters, Cheryl discovers she wants much more than to just write her mother about the unending pain of loss. A magical moment that changes her life comes in the form of an instinct—why can’t she continue to write her mom daily, and receive a letter back from her mother? It’s the best way that she knows how to continue their relationship, in a way that feels real and reciprocal. “I write to my mother, and she writes me back. I ask her questions; she answers. She still tells me to go to bed earlier, and she reminds me that no matter where she is, she will always be my mother.” The letters reveal Cheryl’s struggle in the different facets of grief—searching for the beloved, wanting to join them in death; anger, extreme fatigue, and even euphoria specific to grief. The letters remind her that her mother’s love and attention continue on, and the growth of the mother/daughter relationship is no longer limited to the physical world.

From the Back Cover: FOR TWENTY-FOUR YEARS...

He assumed he knew who his parents were, until accidentally discovering the truth about his birth — a secret the family was sworn to uphold even in the event that the truth was uncovered.

In an area of the United States where coal was once king, a baby was brought into a family, the youngest of ten children, or so he thought.

What he discovered was that his entire life as he knew it was a lie, and that a church whose doctrines revolve around the truth also became involved in the coverup. Come to understand the devastation wrought by a family’s refusal to help him find what he was desperately seeking—his biological father!

Lies in the Family Album chronicles a life of deception, continuing with a man’s twelve-year search for his father, culminating in victory ... the truth. A moving story about lies and love, joy and sorrow, and one man’s search for his roots.

WARNING

In order to convey the flavor of the area and the personality of the characters, the author finds it necessary at times to use the customary dialects of the community. Some will find such language colorful, while others will find it offensive. The graphic nature merely seeks to illustrate the realities of life as perceived by the author.

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About the Author: Pat Miller currently resides in Spring, Texas. This is his first published work, but by no means his last. He is still working in an executive position with the Chrysler Credit Corporation and savors those free moments away from the crazy world of the automobile business when he can write and create works which make people believe in themselves, feel good about themselves. Although writing has become a focal point in his life, the word “family” has taken on a new meaning for him and he puts this first, above all others. Because of this book, he fully intends to pursue a support group for anyone who has had to experience firsthand the feeling of being cheated, lied to, or both. Because of this support group, further books concerning “the truth” are inevitable.

Apostle Robert L. Battle, Sr. is a native of Washington, D.C. was employed as a federal law enforcement officer. Seeking to know more, this man of God was a member of Free Gospel Deliverance Temple for more than fifteen years. Noted for his organizational and powerful leadership skills, Apostle Battle, was president of a local union. He has been a mentor and counselor to youth that are in foster care and waiting to be adopted. In September 1985, Apostle Battle met and married his wife, the former Noreen Rita Jones, who is a prophetess in her own rite, and was also a member of Free Gospel Deliverance Temple. They have four children and three grandchildren. In the mid-90s, Apostle Battle accepted the call into the ministry. He became elder and later resident pastor after only a short time. A noted teacher, Apostle Battle was also an instructor at a distinguished Bible College. His ability to teach the scriptures and to reach the unreachable through the anointing power of Jesus Christ has been recognized by many, even the elite socialites. His emphasis in ministry is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, restoration, and the strength of the family. Apostle Battle earned a Bachelor of Prophetic Arts degree and graduated from the Elijah School of the Prophets, North Carolina. He believes that the nurturing and instructing of the prophetic voice are essential in these Apostolic and Prophetic times. Because of the prophetic voice spoken over their lives, both are walking out their destiny as mandated by the Power and Word of God.

An autobiography by musician Legrek Wright about his life and meetings with celebrities such as Donald Trump and Evander Holyfield.