From the Dust Jacket: Harold and Shirley Dresbach seemed to be a perfect couple. They had two of everything—two boats, two Chryslers, two handsome teen-age boys. Wealthy and influential, they were active in politics and often entertained prominent visitors in their waterfront home on the Chesapeake Bay. So on a quiet January morning when their nude bodies, riddled with bullets, were found, people in the affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., were stunned. They were still more stunned and horrified when the Dresbachs’ fifteen-year-old son, Wayne, was charged with the killings.

Michael Mewshaw, a childhood friend of Wayne’s, was the first to learn of the tragic events that morning, and from the start he suspected some essential truth had been hidden. Life for Death is the account of his frustrating and sometimes frightening investigation into the crime and punishment of his friend. It is a harrowing tale of explosive family passions—and of coldly dispassionate criminal justice. Played out behind a façade of propriety, it is a drama composed almost entirely of unspeakable acts—black-market adoption, alcoholism, child and wife abuse, sexual experimentation, sadism, incest, and finally murder.

Critics and authors ranging from Graham Greene to Robert Penn Warren have praised Mewshaw’s novels for their narrative drive, and instinct for subjects in which something morally crucial is at stake. In Life for Death he has placed these same talents in the service of truth.

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About the Author: Michael Mewshaw was born in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he held a Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing and was given a National Endowment for the Arts award in 1974. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Man in Motion, Waking Slow, The Toll, Earthly Bread, and Land Without Shadow. Since 1973 he has divided his time between traveling and teaching at the University of Texas.

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By the Same Author: Money to Burn: The True Story of the Benson Family Murders (1987, Atheneum); True Crime (1991, Poseidon Press); and If You Could See Me Now (2006, Unbridled Books).

Raised in northern California as an adopted child, life was not always easy. I will take you through the frustrations of my adolesence. Teen years were not heading down the right path either. Learn how a couple books and a desire to be successful changed lifes direction almost instantly. I will share more roller coaster rides through life than thought possible. From starting a business and being a young entreprenuer to the constant battles of life and learning how to start over again or just survive. this book is full of helpful experiences. For anyone that has researdied an adoption, you will recognize this search to be one of the most complicated, agonizing searches possible. This secret stayed buried for over 47 years, and was intended to be hidden forever. Ever wonder how mental illness was aquired or how it is to be in a relationship with a bipolar person? This book might make you think different about that whole subject.

Life Lessons of a Throwaway Kid is the poignant memoir of former professional minor league baseball player, Cordell Farley. Born and raised in the small town of Blackstone, Virginia, Farley offers a glimpse into his life growing up as a foster kid, a secret not revealed to him until he was an adult, and the impact of emotional and sexual abuse on his self-esteem as a young boy coming of age. He would come to find refuge and healing in sports. Life Lessons of a Throwaway Kid is the story of triumph over adversity and how sometimes all that matters is going up to bat.

Are you going through life’s ups and downs alone? Are you a victim of the foster system or adopted and want to know, Why me? Can there ever be life after abuse or abandonment? If you have experienced opposition or neglect, this book is for you. In her autobiography, The Life of a Lily, author Lily L. Ratliff shows you that through all of your mess, God can bring you to a point of acceptance of what life has given you, with the vigor to carry on. A catalyst for hope and restoration in your life, with easy-to-read vignettes and relevant corresponding Scriptures, The Life of a Lily shows how a young girl triumphs by discovering what so many others failed to realize: that God had a plan for her life.

From the Publisher: Through a moving autobiographical account, Donna Lynn reveals the downfall of a passionate adopted child, who took to heart the slights she encountered as a pastor’s kid in her father’s Evangelical churches. As she grew up, Donna fell into a downfall to such an abject state that she even tried to take her own life. Donna describes compelling details of her long road to recovery, forgiveness, and even miracles. She describes in raw detail what it’s like to grow up as a PK in a church. It was in the midst of her strife where Donna found God’s grace and love. Donna learned she was never too far away for God to find her.

Lin Riley had always known she was adopted. Growing up the dark-eyed, olive-skinned child of fair parents, she would always dread the questions about why she looked so different from her parents. She had a very happy childhood and hadn’t given a thought to finding her real parents until the day she held her own baby in her arms and for the first time saw a face that looked like hers, felt what her mother must have felt on first holding her, and wondered how she could have possibly let her go—and why. Lin’s baby daughter Sam made her feel connected to the rest of the world for the first time, and made her yearn to find her own mother and father. But motherhood got in the way, and wasn’t until twenty-five years later, when her daughter had become an Olympic swimmer and media star, that she had the time to actually start that search in earnest. The result is a book filled with the joy of discovery and the heartbreak and loss, as Lin and Sam put the missing pieces of the jigsaw into place. An intensely emotional, honest and personal story of three generations of love and memories and how Lin’s journey into her mother’s life would change the lives of Lin and her daughter Sam forever.

Life Through the Eyes of Candy: Adoption, Trials and Happiness—“Life is What You Make It!” is the story of Candy’s personal life journey of adoption that started 34 years ago, from the time learning about her adoption, coping with struggles and many “blows” in her time as a young child, teenage years to her late 20s. Having to deal with her peers, once they had learned that Candy was adopted. Poems that Candy has written over time...photos of both sides if the family. ... What a magnificent feeling, meeting your birth family for the very first time is. It is a feeling that you can not possibly express...but not all went smoothly at first! In sharing my personal journey, I hope that I may be able to answer some questions that many may have with their own adoption. Also, I want to shine some light, but most importantly to show that there is happiness and nothing is impossible—believe in yourself. Not only can you read a real life journey about an adoption that was meant to be, you can go beyond and meet the faces, on DVD, with interviews on both sides. There is family that I was raised with and my birth family. They too go into depth about their emotions and relate how I was in my younger years, and how proud they are now about what their daughter was able to achieve in life. About the Author: Candy Williams is 34 years of age, lives on the Sunshine Coast, Australia, with her family, partner and children, loves life and spending as much time with her family as she can. Candy has two children who have special needs, and attend special school. Candy helps others who have been adopted who want to know more about dealing with their own adoption. Being raised as an adopted child and experiencing many different emotions and experiences, Candy very much wants to reach out, help and let them know that there is happiness and that there is light. Also to let them know to believe within themselves and that nothing is impossible. Candy relaxes by: fishing, going to the beach, ten-pin bowling (league), having fun with family, reading, horse riding and also spending time with her two best mates (they are known as “The Three Amigos”).

This immensely reflective and emotional book deals with the difficulties faced by a person suffering from borderline personality disorder. BPD is often thought of as the most severe of the most common mental illness and is considered by some to be untreatable. This book replaces much of the myths surrounding this illness with col, hard facts and as such is a very important and profound read.

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About the Author: Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of traveling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.

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By the Same Author: A Mind to Be Free (2005) and A Life Worth Living (2006); all three books have also been published in a single volume as From the Prison of My Mind (2007), which was reissued as Letting Go in 2013 by CreateSpace.

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Compiler’s Note: The edition issued under the auspices of the self-publishing platform, CreateSpace, was published under the name Polly Fielding.

In the tradition of Jo Ann Beard’s Boys of My Youth, and Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, Paula McLain has written a powerful and haunting memoir about the years she and her two sisters spent as foster children. In the early ’70s, after being abandoned by both parents, the girls were made wards of the Fresno County, CA, court and spent the next 14 years in a series of adoptive homes. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the freshest memoirs to be published in recent years. McLain’s beautiful writing and limber voice capture the intense loneliness, sadness, and determination of a young girl both on her own and responsible, with her siblings, for staying together as a family. About the Author: After leaving California in 1987, Paula McLain spent the next decade in personal and professional vagabondage. She has worked in auto plants and hospitals and has been a cocktail waitress, a Christmas tree salesperson, a pizza maker, and an English teacher. In 1996, she received her MFA from the University of Michigan. Since then she has been in residence at Bread Loaf, Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. At work on a novel, she lives in Madison, WI.

Doris, and her twin brother, David, were born in 1933 in North Carolina and given up for adoption by their natural mother. After David died of kidney disease (a disease doctors suggested could be passed to future generations), Dr. Doris Smith embarked on her quest to secure the medical information necessary for the health of her children. Despite setbacks at every turn (some may be surprised at the stubborn, unenlightened attitude of bureaucrats; others will not), Dr. Smith was ultimately reunited with her birth parents, proving that determination will often yield the desired results. By the Same Author:, Out of My Arms, But Never Out of My Heart.

My project, Listen, is intended to communicate stories of adopted Koreans, who were sent to Western cultures, face many challenges in finding their cultural identities. It was not their choice to leave their native culture and birth families, and this makes it especially difficult for them to figure out who they are and how they can define themselves. Since they are living as Westerners with Asian appearance, their identity reside in the gap between their physical appearances and the culture(s) in which they live. Six adopted Koreans volunteered their stories their experiences as adopted Koreans. In reading their stories, I can reflect on some of my experiences as a foreigner living and studying in a Western culture. As I am a Korean and consider myself a foreigner, it is a personal as well as a professional interest to study the intersection of culture and identity. Originally written as author’s dissertation for advanced degree at Virginia Commonwealth University, June 13, 2008. Compiler’s Note: See, Wikipedia entry for VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.

From the Dust Jacket: You might know her as a Tony Award-winning Broadway star, who originated the role of Galinda the Good Witch in the smash musical Wicked and won a Tony for 1999’s You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Or you may recognize her from her starring roles on TV—The West Wing, Pushing Daisies, Sesame Street ... oh, and her Huge Hit Sitcom Kristin on NBC. (Huge hit. L.A. breast-implant huge. Ask either of the people who watched it.) Or maybe you saw her sexy spread in FHM magazine? Or her appearance on Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club? Kristin is a wonderful collection of contradictions—but everyone who’s ever met her remembers her as the little girl with the big voice. At four foot eleven, Kristin Chenoweth is an immense talent in a petite but powerful package.

In this lively, laugh-out-loud book, Kristin shares her journey from Oklahoma beauty queen to Broadway leading lady, reflecting on how faith and family have kept her grounded in the dysfunctional rodeo of show biz. The [adopted] daughter of an engineer and a nurse, Kristin was singing in front of thousands at Baptist conventions by age twelve and winning beauty pageants by age twenty-two. (Well, actually she was second runner-up almost every freaking time. But, hey, she’s not bitter.) On her way to a career as a professional opera singer, she stopped in New York to visit a friend and went on a whim to an audition. Through a combination of talent, hard work, and (she’s quick to add) the grace of God, Kristin took Broadway by storm. But of course, into every storm, the occasional drizzle of disaster must fall.

Filled with wit, wisdom, and backstage insight, A Little Bit Wicked is long on love and short on sleep; it’s essential reading for Kristin’s legions of fans and an uplifting story for anyone seeking motivation to follow his or her dreams—over the rainbow and beyond.

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About the Author: Kristin Chenoweth is an award-winning musical theatre performer, opera singer, television and film actress, and recording artist. She lives in New York and Los Angeles.

Joni Rodgers is the author of several books including Bald in the Land of Big Hair, a memoir of her own unlikely journey from cancer patient to celebrity memoir guru.

The psychology and sociology of adoption is complex. Many adoptive parents have experienced the grief of their inability to bear a child; a deep disappointment leading to uncertainty and loss of self esteem. Through adoption they restore, to some extent, their social respectability and personal worth, oblivious to the child’s primal wound of separation. The child who is placed with adoptive parents soon after birth is denied the experience of the biological sequence that begins in the womb; the merging of the physiological with the psychological that forms the post-partum bond. The resultant collision between the needs of the adoptive parent and adoptee has the capacity to magnify the pain for each and shatter the illusion irrevocably. Opinions on adoption vary, depending on which side of the triangle you’re sitting on, but this book has something for all. Told from the perspective of the adoptee, it traces her formative years from the blank slate of birth to the verge of adulthood and the relentless search for self, while giving insight into the institutions of the last century. About the Author: Merlene Fawdry is an award-winning writer and poet, author of The Little Mongrel: Free to a Good Home, The Hidden Risks, and several books of poetry. With short stories and poetry published in literary magazines in Australia and overseas, she is a skilled writing group and workshop facilitator who provides an editing, formatting & design and manuscript print preparation service for other writers. A shy activist, committed to giving a voice to the oppressed through her writing, Merlene has a keen interest in environmental issues. She uses her poetry to speak out against what she sees as government endorsed decimation of the environment.

This is a story about a boy named Bobby who spent the first eleven years of his life in an orphanage system. He also spent part of those eleven years with a family that loved him and yet could not adopt him. As seen through the eyes of Bobby, the story takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride as he learns to cope with life in the orphanage with his three older sisters, and with the joys of living with and the sorrows of separation from the family who took this orphan boy into their hearts. This is a story that has an abrupt bittersweet ending. It is NOT the typical orphan’s story. Bobby’s sisters did live the typical orphan’s life, but Bobby did not. He was the exception: part time foster child, part time orphan boy. The story was written as fiction, though it is based on a true story. The names of the characters were changed for the usual reasons. The only name not changed is Bobby. Each story did happen. Some of the circumstances surrounding each story are fictional. With the emphasis being put on children and child welfare today, as was evidenced by the President giving a special award to a family that had taken into foster care and had adopted many children, I think this book is JUST IN TIME!

Bobby’s Adoption is the rest of Bobby’s story, starting with his adoption. This book takes you through the sudden and unexpected chain of events, which brought about his adoption. Follow Bobby as he struggles to cope with a world totally new to him, which included his adoptive parents. Bobby’s teen years were full of experiences that the kids he went to school with, could only dream about. While Bobby reached heights that he had never dreamed possible a few years earlier, he never forgot his roots. While he lived his new life the way most Americans lived theirs, there was always that question, “Where are they now? Will I ever see them again?” After getting his college degree, Bobby found himself drafted into the Army, where he had an unexpected adventure. Bobby’s adoptive years ended with the death of his foster mother. However the story does not end here. It would be many years before he would have the answers to those questions that were tucked away in his memory. It would be many years before the longed for happy ending would become a reality. To be exact, it would be forty-seven years for Bobby’s life to come full circle, to that longed for happy ending, with the two families he loved and who loved him. But even here there was a touch of the bittersweet, as he now must for that final and complete reunion. The two people, he especially wanted to see—his brother, whom he hardly knew at all and the lady, who started this whole improbable story—had gone on to their reward. This reunion will have to remain on hold till Bobby joins them. About the Author: Born in Jermyn, PA, R.K. Feeney spent most of his first eleven years in the Catholic orphanage system in Scranton, PA. John and Helen Curley adopted him, in 1950. He grew up in New York City, where he got his B.S. Degree in Education from Manhattan College. He spent the next two years in the Army and was stationed most of that time up in Alaska. After his time in the service, he started his teaching career in the public schools of New York City. After sixteen years, he left the City schools and continued teaching in the town of Kearny, NJ, for another ten years. He left teaching and worked in sundry jobs, which included computer graphics, real estate, office management in a court reporting firm and finally some retail. He retired to Tampa, FL, where he completed his first book, Little Orphan Boy.

From the Back Cover: This is truly a work from the Lord. I had never had a desire to write a book. This all changed August 12, 2013, when the Lord spoke in such a way that I knew what His desire was for me.

In this book, you will read of true-life situations. You’ll read about how God used two mothers to raise me, one who birthed me and made the hard decision to give me up for adoption. The other mother prayed and asked God for a son and promised Him that she would raise him up in fear and admonition of Him. Through the adoption process that I went through, we can learn how we are adopted into the family of God.

You will also we see how a real dad takes care of his children and the day the Lord introduced me to my Father in heaven.

This book is written in obedience to help us understand church terms that we don’t really understand. By using easy and practical illustration, you can have an understanding of new birth or born again and how it is done, adoption, the full meaning of “the cost of our salvation” and much more.

If this book blesses you, please give all the glory to God, for He is one who planned this story from the beginning of my life.

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About the Author: Jimmy Edwards is the pastor of Rays of Faith, Tabernacle in the Kissimmee, Florida area. He is married to Winnie Greasham Edwards, and they have four children and seven grandchildren. He has been in the ministry since 1994 in Kansas and Florida.

There are currently between 1.5 and 2 million adopted children in the United States and between 6-10 million adopted adults. In addition, there are currently about a half million children in the foster care system waiting to be adopted. I was one of those children in the foster care system. In 1948 I was shuttled between several foster homes before finally being adopted by two of the more loving parents you could ever hope to find. I am a walking, talking, fully functioning result of the adoption system and as such I have certain perspectives about adoption that I would like to share with you. Needless to say, I am a huge fan of adoption. As one of the success stories, I am fully aware of the benefits that come from the pairing of a child and loving parents. I have lived a wonderful life, all because my birth mother was willing to give birth and by extension give me a chance at a good life. Yes, there are millions of us out there, each one with our own personal story, each one with our own perspective. For those of you who are considering adoption, and for those of you who are products of adoption, this book is for you. In the following chapters I hope to give you a greater insight about the joys, and pitfalls, that are inherent in the process of adoption. I welcome your comments and I hope that you share your own experiences about adoption. It is my hope that this book will increase awareness about adoption and also validate some of the feelings that many adopted children most likely experience. The book is a series of essays and can be read in any order that you so choose. Sit back, relax and enjoy!

Living with death, adoption, abuse, resentment, jealousy, suicide, sadness, and the gift of life. These are events that have taken place, but seen and felt through a child’s eyes and mind.

These are real American stories. Nancy had the strength and vision to join the Navy and leave behind the troubles that haunted others on the reservation. A Native American imbued with prided in her heritage, Nancy refused to limit her horizons. Self-esteem issues, however, left her vulnerable to victimization by men. The boys knew not to mess with the Muslim girl shrouded in her flowing garments, only her eyes and broad nose visible above her veil. Ife, an African-American raised by a devout mother, was unprepared for the consequences of her teenage indiscretions. The consequences have resonated throughout her life. Ellyn’s future was in doubt when she was born in Korea with a cleft palette. Although she has thrived living with her adoptive family there were times as a little girl when she cried. Ellyn yearned to meet her biological family. These three contemporary, minority women live in the heartland. Their search for identity, self-worth, and happiness make inspirational reading.

The powerful story of a former foster care child, born premature to an alcohol- and drug-addicted teenager who traded sex for drugs, and how he overcame daunting life challenges in pursuit of his dreams. Developmentally delayed as a result of his birth mother’s abuse, Lucas Daniel Boyce struggled out of the gate and ended up failing kindergarten. His adoptive mother didn’t cast him aside as another tragic statistic however. Instead, Dorothy Boyce instilled in Lucas two very important principles that drove his determination to overcome the cards he’d been dealt and enabled him to eventually serve at the White House, fly aboard Air Force One, and become an executive for the NBA’s Orlando Magic at the young age of 29.

From the Dust Jacket: Saroo Brierley was born in a poor village in Khandwa, India. He lived hand-to-mouth in a one-room hut with his mother and three siblings for the first five years of his life ... until he got lost. For twenty-five years.

This is the story of what happened to Saroo in those twenty-five years. How at only five years old, uneducated and illiterate, he wound up on the streets of Calcutta. And survived. How he later wound up in Hobart, Tasmania, living the life of an upper-middleclass Aussie. And how, at thirty years old, with a propensity for solving mathematical formulas, a stubborn memory desperately clinging to the last images of his hometown and family, and the advent of Google Earth, of all things, he found his way home.

A Long Way Home recounts the triumphant journey of a young man who rediscovers a childhood and identity long left behind, through an incredible story of survival against all odds. A celebration of family and faith in all its forms, this is a book that will stand the test of time as a shining example of the extraordinary feats we can achieve when hope endures.

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About the Author: Born in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India, Saroo Brierley currently lives in Hobart, Tasmania, where he manages a family business, Brierley Marine, with his father. His story is being published in nine countries.

From the Back Cover: A child separated from family is a truly disturbing prospect. Yet this has been the fate of many thousands of children in Australia’s recent history.

The ordeals and triumphs of the Stolen Generations and British child migrants are now being exposed, but there is a great silence about their white Australian contemporaries. How did these children cope in the institutions that housed them after separation from their families by court orders, abandonment or the death of parents?

Kate Shayler was born into a happy family that was soon devastated by the death of her mother. Four-year-old Kate was taken to the Burnside Homes to live a childhood of sorts. This is the story of her journey from dreadful loneliness, loss of identity and her father’s betrayal, to rediscovering self-respect, dignity and her place in the world.

Far from being a litany of despair, The Long Way Home is a beautifully written memoir full of the hope of childhood. Hard to put down, even harder to forget, this is a timely reminder that every child deserves to be cherished.

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About the Author: Kate Shayler gained her B.A., Dip Ed and enjoyed 20 years teaching in western Sydney where she especially loved supporting kids lost in the crowd when they started school. During those years she underwent counselling, gained a Master of Education and took time off to write this book. She now lives in the Blue Mountains with her partner, also a homes kid, and satisfies her passions for bushcare, sculpture, social justice and, of course, writing.

From the Back Cover: “During my second day on earth, a nurse came and stole me from my mother.”

So begins the true story of The Looked After Kid and his turbulent journey through life. Placed in care at a very early age after his mother’s breakdown, Paolo Hewitt experienced a traumatic, often abusive relationship with his foster mother. Moved to an orphanage at the age of ten, he vividly documents what life was like for children growing up in care in the ’70s and addresses the emotional struggles, the fear and rejection that so many children without a normal family life experience.

Deeply moving, as well as very humorous and entertaining, with a cast of memorable characters, The Looked After Kid is a book about love and luck, broken promises and loyalty amongst friends. It is about the strength and compassion in all of us. It is a book written from the heart and is dedicated to all those who “go to sleep at night believing the world to be a dark and terrible place.”

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About the Author: Paolo Hewitt is a journalist and author of over 20 acclaimed books spanning music, fashion and sport. He began his writing career at Melody Maker and New Music Express in the 1970s. Among many others, he has published definitive works on David Bowie, Oasis, and The Jam, and writes regularly for national newspapers and magazines. He has written an acclaimed sequel to this biography, But We All Shine On: The Remarkable Orphans of Burbank Children’s Homem also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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By the Same Author: But We All Shine On: The Remarkable Orphans of Burbank Children’s Home (2014, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

This book is written anonymously by a former foster child. It is her personal account depicting her life of a childhood abuse, to living in an orphanage and finally being taken in by a permanent foster family, It is recommeded reading for all, but especially those in public service service, such as social workers, educators, physicians and the like. Readers will find the book both emotional as well as uplifting.

From the Dust Jacket: Lost Bird is the name that Native Americans give their missing children—the daughters and sons who are still being taken from tribal reservations by theft or trickery. In this haunting memoir, Yvette Melanson tells of growing up with a false identity. She was raised to believe that she was white and Jewish. At age forty-three, she learned that she was a Navajo and that she was taken from her mother against her wishes.

Adopted on the black market, Yvette went to live with an affluent older couple in New York. They filled her days with piano lessons, ballet and art classes, and wished her sweet dreams in a canopy bed. But then love faltered, replaced by grief and rejection. Striking out on her own, Yvette went to Israel and sought comfort among Kibbutz friends and army comrades, then returned to the States, no closer to finding peace with herself. With deep yearning and wry humor, Yvette tells of finally finding her reality—a truth that she could never have conjured for herself.

Moving to a hidden corner of the Navajo reservation, she is met by strangers who say they are her family. In the mystery of their ceremonies and in the daily rhythms of reservation life, she learns about Navajo spirituality, about medicine men and Changing Woman, about winds that whisper and ghosts that walk.

This is the story of a woman yearning to fit into an unknown heritage. Even as she learns to weave Navajo rugs, she looks for ways to intertwine her Jewish faith and the Navajo one, to lace the Biblical story of Adam and Eve with the Navajo tales of the corn people. Exploring the secrets of identity and the meaning of family, she measures the ties of upbringing against the tug of blood. What she finds is faith, in all its forms, and love, in all its faces.

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About the Author: Yvette Melanson was a stolen child who searched for her origins and eventually found them through the Internet. In her years as a Lost Bird, she served with honor in both the Israeli army and the United States Navy. She has now begun a new life on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, the place where, as her people say, the wind knows her name.

Claire Safran is an award-winning journalist and contributor to major magazines (McCall’s, New Choices, Reader’s Digest). She is the author of Secret Exodus, a former editor of Redbook and Coronet, and a past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. The wind finds her in Connecticut.

We are often like the drunk, scouring the ground under the lamppost with our eyes because the light there is better than where we think we lost something. If you can relate to this story and are trying to find you, look no further. Just as Leo found himself in the most unlikely of places, there is a good chance that you will do the same—in a space somewhere between Leo’s thoughts and yours. About the Author: Leon Frederick Liesmer (August 10, 1925-January 10, 2002). Within days of his birth in Edmonton, AB, Leo was adopted by the family of John Otto Liesmer, who shortly after moved to Toronto, ON. At St. Michael’s College School, he began a life-long love affair with music as a charter member of the Cathedral Choir School. He later served as choirmaster in several communities. Of his four children, only Kelly Ann remains. As he approached the end of his life, he said, “I am content to live simply and enjoy what each day brings with an increasing interest in what That One has in store for the next phase.”

God is real. This amazing true story brings to light that the Lord has a plan for each life before we are born. The awesome power of prayer, the miracles He performs and how He reveals Himself today are demonstrated in this book. We are all God’s children and He loves every one of us.

This book is relevant not only to the many hundreds of thousands of people who are involved with adoption in various ways, as well as to their extended family and friends, but will also resonate with those who have no connection with adoption, have experienced pain and loss in their life, and wish to experience acceptance and love.

From the Back Cover: I swore I would never let my birth mother into my life, but then Mom died of ovarian cancer and my birth mother, Val, found me through the obituary. Hard to argue with fate. Harder still to let go of childhood promises. This memoir explores what it is to be a mom and what it is to lose one. And so Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers is for anyone who has ever loved and lost—or maybe even found—a mother.

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About the Author: Kate St. Vincent Vogl teaches a variety of courses at the Loft, the largest and most comprehensive literary center in the nation. She also offer writing , religion and sociology through the Minneapolis/St. Paul campus of the University of Phoenix. Her fiction has garnered an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Lorian Hemmingway Short Story Competition, and her essays have been published across the country. Kate graduated from Cornell University cum laude and from the University of Michigan Law School. She lives in Plymouth, Minnesota, with her family.

From the Publisher: Stephen Richardson had always known he was adopted, and the fact did not concern him; it was only in his fifties that he began searching for his biological parents and relatives. Initially he used official records as a source of clues about his family, and this led to meetings with government officials, a chance meeting with an avid genealogist, and an art dealer who put him in touch with a biological aunt. The search then led to other members of his biological family and enabled him to put together a history of his birth mother and her family. But there was still little known about his father, and why did his aunts hint at secrets not to be revealed? The book reads like a detective story, but without a murder. As well as being intriguing read in its own right, Lost and Found has valuable information for anyone seeking to find out more about their families.