In this fascinating biography, the life of dancer Maria Theresa Duncan is chronicled by a close friend, Madame Pamela DeFina. Compiler’s Note: An early feminist, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) didn’t believe in marriage and bore two children out of wedlock by two different men (a daughter named Deirdre with lover Gordon Craig, and a son with [Paris] Eugene Singer). In 1913, at the height of her fame, her two young children died when their driverless car rolled into the Seine River in Paris. A later baby was stillborn. When Duncan did at last wed, the marriage was short-lived and ended in separation, whereupon her husband killed himself. After her own children died, Duncan adopted six of her international dance students who emigrated to the U.S. and took her last name. Duncan herself died in a freak auto accident only two years later when the long flowing scarf she was fond of wearing accidentally entangled in the rear wheel of her Bugatti convertible, throwing her forcibly from the vehicle and strangling her. [Excerpted from Wikipedia]

Saturday Night Live alum Mel Green draws on events from his life to reveal the dark side of funny. Marker is his odyssey in search of family—the family that abandoned him, the family he lost and the family he rejected. Imagine you are fifteen years old. Your adopted father enters your room. A serious man, a physician not known for his delicate bedside manner, he informs you that your biological father is dying of a genetic disease—one that will very likely kill you before you reach thirty. So why not steal your mother’s car? Go visit that girl, the one that asked you to dance that night at the gym—the swirl, her heady scent... Thus begins the flight, the dash towards hedonism, away from terror. The clock ticks. The years pass. The birthday that was never supposed to be arrives. You stand at the end of a diving board in Hollywood—your body engulfed in flames. Accidental? The resident shrink at the county ER doesn’t buy it. So you are forced to confront a self-destructive past. Instead of fleeing, you must now go back into the past and search for your biological family while confronting the unresolved emotional issues haunting your adoptive family. Marker is a provocative and sometimes shocking look at a multi-generational family; topical and sociopolitical, it addresses life with Huntington’s disease, foster care and adoption. It is frank, hilarious and scary.

Maynard 8 Miles is the uplifting story of the triumph of family, hard work and talent in basketball and in life. Hardships are overcome, love is found and incredible basketball feats are achieved. Join first time author Brian Borland as he shares the legacy of his family and relates the heartwarming tale that he was born to tell.

From the Back Cover: As diverse as people appear to be, all of our genes and brains are nearly identical. In Me, Myself, and Why, Jennifer Ouellette dives into the minuscule ranges of variation to understand just what sets us apart. She draws on cutting-edge research in genetics, neuroscience, and psychology—enlivened as always with her signature sense of humor—to explore the mysteries of human identity and behavior. Readers follow her own surprising journey of self-discovery as she has her genome sequenced, her brain mapped, her personality typed, and even samples a popular hallucinogen. Bringing together everything from Mendel’s famous pea plant experiments and mutations in The X-Men to our taste for cilantro and our relationships with virtual avatars, Ouellette takes us on an endlessly thrilling and illuminating trip into the science of ourselves.

---

About the Author: Jennifer Ouellette is a science journalist and the author of three previous books, The Calculus Diaries, The Physics of the Buffyverse, and Black Bodies and Quantum Cats. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Discover, Slate, Salon, and Nature, among other publications. She writes a science and culture blog called Cocktail Party Physics on the Web site of Scientific American. Ouellette served from 2008 to 2010 as the director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences that aims to foster creative collaborations between scientists and entertainment-industry professionals. She has also been the Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara and an instructor at the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop. Ouellette holds a black belt in jujitsu and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll.

Growing up, she had a love of Little Orphan Annie. Though she wasn’t orphaned, she’d entertain her parents with songs, re-enactments, and the drama that occasionally comes with growing up adopted. Over the years, she and her mother had discussed finding her natural family, and in late spring of 2011, her curiosity was realized when she got a text message from her mother stating, “I think I found your birth mother.” In a journey of life, death, love, questions and answers, Kim finally found what she had been looking for all her life...and then some. What happens along her journey will encourage her, stretch her, and break her, but what she will learn along the way will be ultimately about herself.

From the Dust Jacket (1989 edition): Memoirs of a Public Baby is a landmark in autobiography: the story of a brilliant young man who remains entirely true to himself, no matter what the social and emotional costs. O’Connor’s English mother abandoned him in France when he was three: he was adopted, then reclaimed, and finally surrendered to a devoted guardian. He spent his childhood in the sugary, fragrant rooms of a seaside pastry shop; among fallen aristocrats in a grimy London slum; in the stale air of a prim suburb. The extraordinary story of his adventures is searingly funny, exhilarating, and marvelously wise. Even the titans of modern literature—Bellow, Mailer, Miller—have hailed his lambent prose: its originality, its purity, its expressionistic power. Without a doubt, Philip O’Connor is what Stephen Spender has called him: “one of the really chosen.”

---

About the Author: Philip O’Connor, has been a vagrant, a poet, and a journalist for the BBC. He lives in a mill in the south of France with his wife, Panna Grady.

From the Back Cover: Within the first few months of her marriage, Denise Humphrey learned that her husband was gay. Tortured by intense and conflicted emotions she existed alone and shut away from life as if in a coffin, both during the marriage and the decade after.

Denise and John loved each other in many ways, making their situation very tragic. They met each other as classical pianists, performed duets together, enjoyed each other’s company, and wanted to be parents. At the same time, parts of their lives were closeted from other people, as well as from each other.

Early in the marriage, John became a medical doctor, and later Denise became a psychologist. After having two delightful sons they both absolutely loved and adored—and still do—the torment of her shuttered life increased even more dramatically because of intense fear that her feelings of shame and secrecy would be passed on to the boys.

Throughout the memoir you will embrace the enormous struggles Denise endured, how she eventually decided to end the marriage, how Denise and John disclosed to their sons, and how all four of them grew even closer through the process. This memoir reveals its resolution and miraculous metamorphosis. Life tragedies can be surpassed!

---

About the Author: Dr. Denise Humphrey is a clinical psychologist and has received literary awards in this profession. Her book is a memoir of having been married to a husband who turned out to be gay and how the family dilemma was surpassed. She lives in Dallas, Texas, and runs a private practice.

The story of Idaho’s Marilyn Robertson, following the events and adventures—and mysteries—in her and her families lives, from the earliest 1940s to the present day.

This book brings together some of the finest paintings of this self-taught artist who is generally regarded to be Hungary’s greatest painter. Contains illustrated catalogue listing of 70 works, three-page introduction, and biographical index. Text in French, English, and German.

Generally regarded as Hungary’s greatest painter, this book brings together some of his finest works. Munkácsy began his life as an orphan, and was adopted by a family of middle-class intellectuals who encouraged him to pursue an artistic career. He studied briefly in Venice and Munich, and later set up a studio in Paris. He hired Jozsef Rippl-Ronai as his assistant, and by the age of 26, had won the medaille d’or from the Salon de Paris for his painting, The Condemned Cell and was well on his way to fame and fortune. Throughout his thirty-year career, he completed over 600 paintings, and his work was acquired by museums worldwide.

Millicent Bradford’s Adoption Story depicts the life of a biracial child who grew up in the foster care system. Early in her life, she was challenged with several moves from foster home to foster home, shelter to shelter never truly building appropriate relationships and never having anyone address her feelings regarding self and her heritage. Later in her life, she was adopted by a Caucasian family who attempted to meet her basic needs, but they missed a key component of her child rearing; they missed socializing her with people who looked like her and they missed preparing her for the social ills she’d experience as a biracial person in America. It wasn’t until she experienced true love that the trauma she suppressed surfaced leading her to disclose facts related to her home environment, removals, emotional abuse and molestation. After years of therapy and a reconnect with family members, Millicent was able to mend her life and she established an organization geared towards helping displaced youth reconnect with absent family members. In her spare time, she travels the nation bringing awareness to disproportionality and disparity as it pertains to African-American children in the foster care system.

This is a wonderfully moving and brilliant account of Marie Berger’s dark secret—her mental illness and her constant attempts to regain control of her life through whatever means possible. In order to do this Marie resolves that she must look deep inside herself to discover the real reason for her illness; a troubled childhood and feelings of rejection from her family seem the most likely cause, but who really understands the workings of the mind? An engaging and fulfilling read, this book poses many questions about mental illness and how it is dealt with in this society of ours.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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

From the Back Cover: Lauren Weedman is not okay.

She’s living what should be the good life in sunny Los Angeles. After a gig as a correspondent with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she scored parts in blockbuster movies, which led to memorable recurring roles on HBO’s Hung and Looking. She had a loving husband and an adorable baby boy.

In these comedic essays, she turns a piercingly observant, darkly funny lens on the ways her life is actually Not Okay. She tells the story of her husband’s affair with their babysitter, her first and only threesome, a tattoo gone horribly awry, and how the birth of her son caused mama drama with her own mother and birth mother with laugh-out-loud wit and a powerful undercurrent of vulnerability that pulls off a stunning balance between comedy and tragedy.

---

About the Author: Lauren Weedman is an award-winning comedic actress, playwright, and author of A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body.

---

By the Same Author: A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe (2007, Sasquatch Books). Her one-woman play, Homecoming, was also included in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002 (2003, Smith & Kraus).

In her newly published memoir, Miss New York Has Everything, Jakiela, who was born with clubfeet and adopted at the age of one, shares memories of her childhood growing up southeast of Pittsburgh in Trafford, PA—hometown of The Love Boat’s Lauren Tewes—where she dreamed of becoming famous and making it big. Inspired by her childhood idol, Marlo Thomas in That Girl, she always wanted to move to New York City and away from the small town where her cantankerous father worked in the steel mills. When she sees an ad from an airline company promising a home base in the Big Apple and a jet-setting lifestyle all over the world, she quickly signs up. But she learns that being a flight attendant is far from glamorous. Instead of Paris layovers in a pillbox hat and white gloves, she gets Frankfurt in a one-size-fits-all polyester uniform and apron. When her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she returns to Trafford only to discover that the writing career and life she always wanted were right there at home—and that the grass in her own backyard might just be greener than the one on TV.

From the Back Cover: Adoption is not an affliction. There are no star-studded benefits or telethons to raise money for adoptees. In a world looking for solutions, adoption is a solution. Not a problem.

Or so they say.

To the millions of people who answer to the name “adoptee,” adoption is something of a paradox, an enigma. It is a question in the form of an riddle. “Who am I?”

Some adoptees wonder. Others search.

I wondered. And then I searched.

What I learned along the way was more than just finding my missing links. I learned that all of us are adoptees.

—Vincent J. Begley

---

About the Author: Vincent J. Begley combines writing and marketing careers in New York City, where his interest in the theater has led to his participation in numerous theatrical and TV productions. A graduate of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, he also completed advanced graduate studies in writing at Manchester College, Oxford.

He and his wife Patty and their four children live in Chester, New York.

From the Back Cover: Something had been missing in Mary Elizabeth’s life. Fear had kept her from seeking answers to questions she had carried with her over a lifetime. Accompany her on the phenomenal, rewarding and life-changing journey when she undertook to find her birth parents. Missing Pieces will inspire you and will help you change the way you think of yourself as a member of the adoption triad as well as de-mystify and simplify the process of search and reunion. You too, may learn the secrets that have been revealed by Mary Elizabeth and others like her, who have embarked upon such a similar journey.

---

About the Author: Beth Sherrill was the only one of six sisters and brothers given over to the adoption system. With the help of Paul, the co-author, she found her birth parents. Beth has her bachelor’s degree in Human Services, worked as a counselor within that field for five years, and now owns and operates her own business. With her husband of twenty-one years, she is raising their four children in their small town in Tennessee.

Paul Drake, JD, has done genealogical research for more than fifty years, teaches and lectures on the subject frequently, and has published several popular guidebooks for uncovering ancestors, all published by Heritage Books. He is a father of three and a grandfather of seven, and lives with his wife and their little dogs in Crossville, Tennessee.

Lydia Mary Gaulthair gave birth to 13 children. One at a time or in pairs, she abandoned all of them. To make matters worse, all of the adults in the lives of these children withheld the truth. Some 50 years later, Gary wanted to find his brothers and sisters. Where do you start looking? This is the search for the Gaulthair children.

From the Back Cover: I’m going to die.

I’m really going to die this time!

“My god, Cheryl, look what you did to yourself! Why did you grab the knife? I just wanted to scare you! I wasn’t going to hurt you!”

A young child is taken from neglectful birth parents and cast into a nightmare of physical and emotional violation by her adoptive parents and a succession of foster families. Along with these childhood memories is the heartfelt description of an adult woman’s search for her lost siblings. Missing Pieces is a searing account of a life-shattering separation from loved ones, child abuse, and the search to put the “missing pieces” of one’s life back together.

---

About the Author: Sherry Cochran is an advocate for child abuse prevention. She also suffers from a late-onset form of deafness and is involved in many organizations that promote awareness about hearing loss, especially in late-deafened adults. Sherry currently lives with her husband and two children in Seattle, Washington, where she is a full-time writer. She spends her free time gardening, working on arts and crafts, and restoring old homes and antique furniture.

From the Publisher: On April 14, 1998, Sarah de Vries disappeared from the corner of Princess and Hastings in Vancouver. She became one of the many women who had vanished from the Downtown Eastside, women—most of them prostitutes or drug addicts—whose fate was all but ignored by the authorities. Years went by, women continued to disappear, and there were no answers for their families. For the women who disappeared did have families. They were loved, they had friends, they had lives that began long before their terrible end. And Maggie de Vries’s sister Sarah was one of them.

Although Sarah and Maggie shared a comfortable, middle-class upbringing, Sarah, adopted as an infant, was black, while the rest of her family was white; and so she alone was the victim of racist taunts and prejudice. As Sarah reached adolescence, her troubles grew. She ran away from home. She became addicted to drugs. She ended up on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. But always she was loved.

Missing Sarah, which incorporates excerpts from Sarah’s journals, is Maggie de Vries’s story of her search for her sister. From those journals, and from the recollections of people who knew Sarah during her 14 years downtown, emerges a portrait of a bright, funny and sensitive woman who found herself trapped in a downward spiral of self-loathing, prostitution, drugs and violence. From the moment Sarah disappeared, her sister never stopped looking for her. Even after Sarah’s DNA was discovered at Robert Pickton’s farm, and hope was replaced by grim certainty, Maggie continued her search. This time she was looking for answers.

Why did so many women have to disappear before the authorities took notice? Was there any way Sarah could have been saved from her life on the streets? And what can we do to help those women who are still trapped, by chance or circumstance, in the same bleak world that Sarah de Vries once inhabited?

---

About the Author: Currently children’s book editor at Orca Book Publishers in Victoria, Maggie de Vries was born in Guelph, Ontario, and grew up in Vancouver where she now resides. Maggie studied at University of Guelph, McGill University (Montreal) and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in English Literature and a Bachelor of Education. She worked as a substitute teacher for five years. She worked as the children’s author (who is also her aunt) Jean Little’s assistant for two years in the late ’80s, traveled with her all over Canada and the States and in England, and taught children’s literature courses with her at the University of Guelph.

Maggie currently teaches children’s literature courses in Language and Literacy Education at UBC and has taught creative writing at Langara Community College in Vancouver. She now teaches a graduate course in writing and publishing in the School of Library, Archival and Information studies at UBC every summer. She has taught a graduate course in Canadian children’s literature at Simmons College in Boston in 1994. Maggie also speaks widely to children about her children’s writing and to adults about her adult book (Missing Sarah) and related experiences. Maggie de Vries was awarded the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in B.C. Literature for 2004 and her book Missing Sarah was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award.

---

By the Same Author: Somebody’s Girl (2011, Orca Book Publishers) and Rabbit Ears (2014, HarperTrophy), among others.

A search for wholeness of being—a loss from inception—lost to the world of illegal adoptions that took place in the 1950s after World War II. The Whitfield County Babies, as they call themselves, were sold on the black market to the State-rejected unfit parents who could pay. Born in the back of drugstore in a small Mississippi town on a cold table, delivered by an unethical doctor and the matron of a profitable unwed mother’s home, these illegitimate discarded babies were bound together by their beginning. As grown adults, thanks to the computer age, they find each other and band together to search for their roots, the birth families who gave them away in shame so many years before. This story takes you through the mud of deceit, secrets, and sometimes surprisingly good intentions to uncover the unceasing pain borne by adoptees who suffer in ignorance of their genetic birth histories. Redemption awaits on all sides as their stories unfold.

From the Dust Jacket: The story of Anna now told by Fynn took place some thirty years ago. Fynn, aged nineteen, when roaming South East London’s dockland one foggy November night picked up, literally from the gutter, a filthy, brised, battered and terrified little girl. He tool her home to his Irish “Mum.”

Anna’s main occupation in life was being a personal friend and helper of Mister God. She knew the purpose of being and the meaning of love. At six years she was a theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet and gardener. At seven she died after a terrible accident with a grin on her beautiful face, saying: “I bet Mister God lets me get into heaven for this.”

Fynn writes of himself and his first meeting with Anna: “My name is Fynn. Well that’s not quite true; my real name doesn’t matter all that much since my friends all called me Fynn and it stuck ... Standing about six foot two, weighing some sixteen stone odd, close to being a fanatic on physical culture, the son of an Irish mother and a Welsh father ... My great delight was to roam about dockland in the night-time, particularly if it was foggy. My life with Anna began on such a night. I was nineteen at the time, prowling the streets and alleys with my usual supply of hot dogs, the street lights with their foggy haloes showing dark formless shapes moving out from the darkness of the fog and disappearing again. Down the street a little way a baker’s shop-window softened and warmed the raw night with its gas-lamps. Sitting on the grating under the window was a little girl. In those days children wandering the streets at night were no uncommon sight. I had seen such things before, but on this occasion it was different.”

This story of Anna, superbly illustrated by Papas, is so strange and so enchanting that the reader finds it hard to believe that it is a story about real people.

---

By the Same Author: Anna and the Black Knight (1990, Fount), among others.

From the Back Cover: Before A.M. Homes was born, she was put up for adoption. Her birth mother was a twenty-two- year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with children of his own. The Mistress’s Daughter is the story of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her.

Homes, renowned for the psychological accuracy and emotional intensity of her storytelling, tells how her birth parents initially made contact with her and what happened afterward (her mother stalked her and appeared unannounced at a reading) and what she was able to reconstruct about the story of their lives and their families. Her birth mother, a complex and lonely woman, never married or had another child, and died of kidney failure in 1998; her birth father, who initially made overtures about inviting her into his family, never did.

Then the story jumps forward several years to when Homes opens the boxes of her mother’s memorabilia. She had hoped to find her mother in those boxes, to know her secrets, but no relief came. She became increasingly obsessed with finding out as much as she could about all four parents and their families, hiring researchers and spending hours poring through newspaper morgues, municipal archives and genealogical Web sites. This brave, daring, and funny book is a story about what it means to be adopted, but it is also about identity and how all of us define our sense of self and family.

---

About the Author: A.M. Homes is the author of several works of fiction, including, most recently, This Book Will Save Your Life. She has been awarded a Guggenheim and an NEA fellowship and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times.

---

By the Same Author: In a Country of Mothers (1993).

---

Compiler’s Note: An excerpt from this book was originally published under the same title in the December 20 & 27, 2004 issue of The New Yorker.

From the Dust Jacket: I always knew I’d find my natural mother, even before I knew her name....

On November 27, 1981, just before Thanksgiving, the New York Post published the triumphant story of a special family reunion—ABC-TV newscaster Doris McMillon’s imminent meeting with Josefine Reiser, the woman who had given her up for adoption thirty years before. Doris expressed nothing but joy at the culmination of her lifelong search for her natural mother and nothing but understanding for Josefine’s predicament: “It wasn’t in the best interests of a white German woman to have a brown baby. So my natural mother put me up for adoption.”

But Doris’ real feelings at the time were not so simple. For years—confused and hurt both by erratic and violent treatment at the hands of her adoptive mother and by her natural mother’s apparent rejection—Doris had built a fantasy of what this reunion would mean. Surviving an adolescence marked by triumphs at school and devastating crises at home, she went on to become a highly successful career woman and make a good marriage, yet she felt she would always have unfinished business until she could meet her “real” mother—which then changed her life in ways she could not have imagined.

Honest, compassionate, and compelling, Mixed Blessing is the moving story of Doris McMillon’s mothers—the woman who raised her and the woman who bore her—and of her own realization of which was her true mother.

---

About the Author: Doris McMillon divides her time between Washington, D.C., where she is an anchorwoman with WJLA-TV, and Long Island, where she lives with her husband and their children.

Michele Sherman, who was the coauthor of Every Loving Gift, lives in Pennsylvania.

---

Compiler’s Note: A related article by Ms. McMillon appeared in the May 1982 issue of Ebony Magazine under the title, “A Double Reunion—How I found my German Mother and GI Father” (pp 38-46).

From the Back Cover: Who is Molly? She isn’t sure herself. She struggles to maintain her identity in the orphanage, she fights for her right to a life of her own as she labours in the convent laundry, and succeeds in making a loving family for herself and her own children, all without knowing where she came from, who her parents were and why she was left with the nuns as soon as she was born.

Throughout her life Molly is obsessed with the need to find her mother. In her years of frustrating struggle, she learns to circumvent the bureaucratic obstacles that seek to prevent her from ever discovering the truth, and with persistence and ingenuity, finally finds what she is looking for, only to have it cruelly denied her. But Molly now knows who she is, and refuses to let that be taken away.

This is an inspiring story of courage and perseverance, a compelling demonstration of the awesome power of the human heart.

---

About the Author: Mary Keenan grew up at St. Vincent’s orphanage and The Good Shepherd Convent in Saint John, New Brunswick and has been a resident of Toronto for forty years. Her greatest blessing—her children and their families live close at hand in Toronto.

A member of the Canadian Authors Association, Mary’s short stories have been published in the CAA’s anthology, Wordscape.

Since returning from her career with the National Hockey League, she has dedicated herself, wholly and earnestly, to this, her first book.

I had been looking for something all my life but I had no idea what it was until I found it. It was the emotional feelings of love. I was an unwanted, unloved pregnancy in an older divorced woman with five other children. At birth I was immediately abandoned, being left at the county orphanage. I was “tried out” by several families and always “brought back,” until, at age three, I was “taken in” by a poor couple living in a village of 300 people. Even then I was left elsewhere for a few days until they decided they were able to keep me. There were no official adoption papers. A birth certificate, but with a different name, was given to me years later with some genealogy information, which probably is mine. There were continual reinforcements of my abandonment during my early childhood with others occurring throughout my life until middle age when I finally realized that I was an abandoned child syndrome. Even then it was difficult to deal with. I had been going through life experiencing all the typical symptoms: insecurity, anxiety, guilt, distrust, withdrawal and unhappiness, not being able to attach or love anyone for fear of being rejected. I had a thick wall keeping everyone out. In spite of these problems I was successful in school, college, post-graduate training and the military, becoming a physician with a successful practice, knowing that I helped many people over the years. However, I could not help myself until a life changing event occurred. My personal life was a mess. Following a major surgical procedure I decided that there had to be a change in my life although I had no idea what it would be. It happened spontaneously and unknowingly, which I attribute to help from my Guardian Angel. I experienced the feelings of true emotional and unconditional love. Although there were some complications, I was able to understand and resolve my abandonment feelings. I will never know why my biological mother did not keep me. Both biological parents went to their graves without my meeting them. I never learned why they did not marry since they were both single. I will never know why my adoptive parents never wanted me to know that I had been adopted. They also went to their graves with their secret. I wonder if they knew who my biological parents were. My goal is to help others recognize childhood abandonment, its symptoms and effects, and the need for acknowledgment. A positive attitude for change is a necessity. My story points out to adopting parents how not to treat the person they are taking into their lives, in order to prevent the abandonment syndrome from occurring or being reinforced.

True stories of adult adoptees searching for their birth families. Most, though not all, of the stories have happy endings, and all are told by the people themselves, detailing just the way the search unfolded.

From the Dust Jacket: For nearly half a century Joan Crawford was the essence of glamorous Hollywood. Having a family of her own, if only for publicity purposes, became for Joan one important measure of success. Unmarried at the time, and living in a twenty-two-room house, she first adopted Christina, then a son, and eventually two more daughters.

Christina was presented to the world as the perfect child of the famous film star, but she could not remain a baby forever, and when the reporters and fans departed, Christina grew up with the reality of child abuse and of alcoholism, and sometimes a nightmare of sheer terror.

Mommie Dearest is the story of the relationship between a child trying to stay alive and a ruthless, cunning, lonely woman who knew every trick of survival. Christina loved Joan and searched for her mother’s love in return throughout the years they shared.

It is a book for all those people who have lived with a terrible secret and have had to hide the truth because they were afraid or because no one would believe them. It is for everyone who knows what it is like to grow up with a parent determined to thwart every effort to achieve independence. In Mommie Dearest, Christina offers hope that it is possible to live through a terrifying personal struggle and create a productive life out of chaos.

“My official papers simply say ‘girl’ born on Sunday afternoon, July 11, 1939. My real mother was a student and my father a sailor, and neither of them wanted to take responsibility for me. So I traveled from Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital to a baby broker to 426 North Bristol Avenue when I was only a few weeks old.”

Christina was first named Joan Crawford, Jr. At that time the laws of the State of California did not allow a single woman to adopt children. Christina was eleven months old before her mother drove with her to Las Vegas, Nevada, where she was legally adopted and given the name Christina Crawford.

---

About the Author: Christina Crawford attended public elementary school in West Los Angeles, then the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, and she graduated from the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in June, 1956. She attended Carnegie Mellon University and the Neighborhood Playhouse Professional School. From 1959 through 1972 she worked as an actress, appearing in numerous summer stock productions, several films, a soap opera, and on television. In 1974 she graduated magna cum laude from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications. In 1975 she graduated from the Annenberg School of Communications at USC with a Master’s degree in Communication Management. She has since worked in the public relations department of a large company handling corporate communications, including film and videotape productions. With her writer-producer husband she has formed a company to promote literary and entertainment ventures.

---

Compiler’s Note: According to the author, “The new [20th anniversary] edition is published as I intended it. More than 100 pages—mostly that delve into my adult relationship with Mother—that were left out of the original version are back in. I’ve also added eyewitness accounts from people who came forward with information after the book was initially published, a preface to reflect the whirlwind that has happened in my life since Mommie Dearest was first published, and an afterword on adoption reform.”

Mommy, Don’t! is the poignant story of child abuse and its lifetime effects. More than a memoir, Mommy, Don’t! offers advice to teachers, social workers, parents, neighbors, and anyone who desires to make a difference in the life of a child. A eye-opening “must read” for anyone who wants to make a difference in the world.

Challenged by life and hopelessly caught in a rip current struggling to find a way out? This book was written as an encouragement to live. Not just any life, but one filled with daily peace where joy is easily found in the simple things. The journey isn’t always easy but well worth reframing your perceptions. In this book I reveal my innermost struggles, the fears that accompanied them and how I overcame. My desire is that you read this book and allow the truths to give you hope for the future.

Jessie Karen’s More Will Be Revealed: One Glimpse at a Time is a collection of inspirational and testimonial essays that highlight the struggles, victory, growth and evolution of a human soul growing up in a dysfunctional family. Thirty-six essays and three poems immerse readers into the perils of family violence and emotional abuse while outlining the road to healing and recovery for those who have survived it. More Will Be Revealed highlights, “family recovery,” by giving readers hope and authentic options for healing. This book is a great tool for therapists, individuals in the recovery process and psychology students or anyone who wants to understand the impact of family violence and what really needs to happen for recovery to take place. Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Chapter 5: “Finding My Missing Piece.”

In Moses and Me, author Jean Schultz explores the story of Moses and the moral influences it has in our present culture. She presents a first-person, verbal account that alternates between the biblical figure’s history and her own, focusing on the experiences they have in common: They were both born to women who were prisoners as a matter of circumstance, having never violated any laws. They were both adopted into families that they were not related to. They lived as privileged youths, but struggled with self-esteem and self-identification issues. They committed the act of murder with the intent of being embraced by others they were trying to convince to love them. In the process of her narrative, Schultz reveals how God can use our struggles to define a ministry that reaches out to a world that needs to hear from God’s Word. Although several thousand years separate the stories of Moses and Schultz, the struggles of the human condition have not changed. In this personal narrative, Schultz explains that we strive to speak truth while surrounded by others who cannot grasp the concept of an invisible God, in spite of the evidence of His existence all around us. She hopes to inspire a new generation of believers to reach out to Him and allow Him to heal the brokenness in their lives.