A powerful personal chronicle of Ferg McKinnon’s search. He graphically details its progress, his fear, doubt, frustration, pain, sorrow and anger to eventual joy and emotional resolution. About the Author: Ferg McKinnon studied geography, demography, economics, economic statistics, Russian and Russian Literature at Monash University in Melbourne, as well as completing a Diploma of Education. He played bass guitar in the 1970s rock band "Rainbow Theatre" which produced two albums (The Armada and A Fantasy of Horses). During this time he taught matriculation geography and worked as a freelance journalist and music critic for The Nation Review. Subsequently he worked in various non-literary occupations, then as an in-depth interviewer in medical, industrial, commercial and consumer market research, as well as running his own garden maintenance business.

From the Back Cover: Do you ever:

• Wonder if your birth mother ever thinks about you?

• Feel uncomfortable talking to your parents about your birth family?

• Doubt your worth?

• Wonder if your life was a mistake?

• Think that others don’t “get it” about adoption?

Sherrie Eldridge interviews more than seventy adoptees to bring your questions to light, find the answers, and create connection among adult adoptees. Discover freedom in the unity and in your unique life purpose as you realize your value in life. For five years, Twenty Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make has affected the lives of adoptees and their families. This updated edition goes deeper with study questions for support groups or personal use.

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About the Author: Sherrie Eldridge is an internationally known speaker and author of books about adoption. Her best seller, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wished Their Adoptive Parents Knew, is in its ninth year of publication and has sold more than 130,000 copies. By blending biblical truths with life-changing principles, Sherrie helps parents see adoption from their child’s viewpoint. Her passion is to deepen relationships between parents and their adopted children.

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By the Same Author: Twenty Things Adoptive Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew (1999, Dell Trade Paperback); Twenty Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make (2003, Piñon Press); Forever Fingerprints: An Amazing Discovery for Adopted Children (2007, EMK Press); Twenty Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed (2009, Delta); Under His Wings: Truths to Heal Adopted, Orphaned, and Waiting Children’s Hearts (with Beth Willis Miller; 2012, Jewel Among Jewels Resources); and Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish: A Daily Devotional for Adoptive and Birth Parents (2015, New Hope Publishers), among others.

Quiet Confidence is a memoir written in a series of vignettes which follows an adoptive daughter through pivotal moments of her life. From the first time she met her parents at thirteen months old, she’s thrown into a whole new world full of diapers and properly fitting clothing. The adaptation happens quickly, surrounding her with musicals and Teletubbies. The reality of adoption comes later, always burned into the back of her mind as she entered and traveled through school. She goes about day to day moments, thinking about meanings, honesty, and the truth.

Kathie Epstein is the maiden name of Kathie Lee Gifford. Kathie is just starting out on a singing career that promises to be fabulously successful. A former Junior Miss Pageant entrant, secretary, household aide and adopted daughter to Anita Bryant and Bob Green, talented performer, beloved friend, sparkling witness for Jesus, Kathie epitomizes all that is good and right with American youth.

Quilts & Capers in a true story of two adopted brothers who set out to determine who their birth parents were. One of the brothers was sixty-nine years old and the other sixty-five when the search began. Follow one brother though the pain staking procedures and problems encountered while locating birth records, conducting interviews, and searching and examining records and documents across state lines. Reach through the years and come face to face with decisions made long ago. Connect with the present as discoveries are made and last chances are embraced. Learn the deep meaning of family. One that even through years of separation shows the ever lasting bond of love between a mother and her child.

From Kirkus Reviews: A balanced, if redundant, account of the life and times of rock promoter Bill Graham, by English-born investigative journalist Glatt. Born in 1933 in Germany, Graham escaped the Holocaust, coming at age ten to the US, where he was adopted by a Jewish-German family but suffered psychological problems adjusting to American life. Progressing from running crap games at a Catskills hotel, he settled in San Francisco, where he managed a trucking company while yearning for a life in the arts. Taking a big pay cut, Graham became the manager of the San Francisco Mime Troupe; soon after, he began promoting rock concerts, using an old theater in a bad part of town as his venue. Graham built his empire on the Fillmore, eventually opening an N.Y.C. branch while moving into band-management, record production, and the lucrative business of rock souvenirs. He eventually closed both theaters but remained a force in the rock world, organizing charity events like Live Aid and the first Amnesty International tour. Although Graham was professionally successful, his personal life was often a shambles: He treated women poorly and was often strung out on cocaine, Ecstasy, and sleeping pills. Glatt relies mostly on others’ written accounts and magazine interviews in compiling this bio (he even uses Graham’s own Bill Graham Presents, 1992, which covers much of the same ground), but he did talk to a few Graham associates, particularly one of the promoter’s ex-girlfriends, Regina Cartwright, who sheds some new light on Graham’s fiery temperament. Glatt’s British roots lead him to odd mistakes (he describes Kesey’s Magic Bus as “a brightly painted van”), and he’s weak when discussing ’60s social trends. In any case, Graham’s life was so downbeat (he died in 1991 in a helicopter crash following a decade of new personal declines) that one wonders why we need another bio to supplement his own: for rock completists only.

Raising a Child Like Me examines the concept of interracial adoption and reviews opinions for and against creating diverse families. The author highlights her own adoption story; her struggles with school, relationships and self-esteem, and also some of the life lessons that came from her experiences. The book answers many questions related to the author’s experience as an interracial adoptee and insists that in raising a child of another race love is necessary but education and common sense are imperative. The author maintains that with open minds racially diverse homes will create positive identities and develop racial awareness. The book may challenge how people think about creating families through adoption but the reader will find sensible advice on creating healthy and lasting bonds with adopted children.

Born in England during World War 2, Susannah is left by her birth mother and spends her first five years under the care of a nurse and later of the Mother Superior at a Catholic Convent. At the age of five she is sent to Cuba to be adopted. Susannah spent 30 years searching for her birth mother. The memoir describes her relationship with the women who represented a mother figure in her life and her unending need to find her birth mother and her roots.

Adopted children often have curiosity regarding their birth. “Randy” is a true short story about one adopted man’s search for answers about his life.

An orphaned boy survives the evacuation of Seoul and the Korean War, eventually immigrates to his dream America, with the sponsorship of several military workers and a Benedictine priest. Shu, orphaned as a very young boy, lives in Seoul in a poor house with “Mama Pak,” who basically is the head of a gang of beggars. When Seoul is evacuated with the sudden invasion of the North Koreans and Chinese Communists, Shu manages to cross the Han River with thousands of other refugees, crawling on hands and knees on the railroad bridge. The next several months on the road are filled with the horror of death and war, including attachments quickly made, and just as quickly lost to bomb deaths and gore. He shows himself to be resourceful, stealing food and water, and also yearning always for human attachment: a constant search for a mother and father figure. The descriptions of his wartime experiences are truly horrific, and while told with a child’s voice and not the best English, the stories of torn flesh and fields of death for one so young is unforgettable. He is wounded and is nursed back to health by the Americans. Thus begins his attachment to the USMGIK as a “helper,” running errands, shining shoes, learning smatterings of English as he also learns to dream of a different future, of a future at all. He becomes obsessed with going to America, and eventually finds people who become attached to “Little Joe,” including a Colonel, translator, social club female director and a priest, and he finally does make it, many years later, and attends college. The story is among the earliest English-written autobiographies from the Korean War about a Korean orphan, and while the setting and circumstances are remarkable and fascinating, his choice to use the voice of his youth to narrate his story, and his stubborn self-centeredness (which were essential to his survival) don’t convey well to modern terms of being able to grow attached to the narrator. It also falls into the genre of Christian-themed literature, though that is not its main focus. It remains an amazing story of one who finally did make it from the gutter to an American college and an American wife. Fortunately for Western readers, his precociousness and lack of early education overcome the normal Korean cultural reticence to tell all.

A comprehensive bibliography that deals with all aspects of adoption and all members of the adoption triad. This book must be directly ordered from Morning Side Publishing, P.O. Box 21071, Saanichton, R.P.O. Saanichton, B.C., V8M 2C3, Canada. The Phone number listed is 250-652-3284. Be aware that this information may change in the future.

A book describing the mystery and thrill of Carson’s search for his birth family, from dead ends to the reward of entering the family itself. “All birth records are sealed and held perpetually to ensure that the law of confidentiality is not breached.” Those disheartening words Norman Carson encountered on every hand as he searched for his birth family. Carson persisted for two years despite being continually rebuffed. As an evangelical Christian he was struck by the fact that his adoption might illustrate the doctrine of adoption through Christ into the family of God. Received in Grace details Carson’s childhood in his adoptive family; his search for his biological family, begun when he was 62; the many byways and dead ends he encountered; and the rich reward that became his in the birth family itself. In his story Carson describes in intimate detail his childhood in the Kansas of the 1930s, the pleasures and difficulties of being a preacher’s kid, and finally the fascinating history and rich variety of personalities that he discovered in his birth family. Anyone seriously considering searching for his/her roots will be caught up in the mystery and thrill of Carson’s search. About the Author: Dr. Norman Carson, Ph.D., retired professor and former chair of the Geneva College Department of English, is managing editor of The Geneva Magazine. He has contributed reviews and articles for a number of Christian journals. He is an ordained minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America.

Written by his adopted son, with a memoir of the author by his daughter; and illustrative and explanatory notes. A fabulous history of George Washington which takes the reader from discussion regarding his mother, through the various battles in which he was a part, to his last hours. Chapters relate stories relative to Martha Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Morgan, Robert Morris, Thomas Nelson and Henry Lee. Appendices include original correspondence between the author and Washington and orations delivered by the author.

This inspirational memoir shares the amazing true story of a young mother who was separated from her son at birth. She never even got to hold him before he was taken away. Over a quarter of a century goes by without her even knowing his name. Could Providence cause their paths to cross even after all these years? See through their individual trials and triumphs how God truly does have a plan for every life.

Roller-coaster journey of an adoptee searching for her family and roots. Reconnected to My Bellybutton is a positive adoption story which resonates with one miracle after another as Joy actually begins to search for her roots. In both her life and in this story you will see the obvious care and design of our loving Heavenly Father.

Reconnections is the story of the reunion of Mary Bradford Clark with her daughter Kathy, whom she had given up for adoption many years before. Herself an adopted child who had been reunited with her birth mother, Mary was ecstatic when Kathy tracked her down and gave her a call: “Kathy’s phone call to me was the best award any mother could get. I was instantly healed from the hurt of my own abandonment as a baby and the many years of mother worry about Kathy’s safety and well-being.” Reconnections is a product of love and support from Mary’s daughters, Kathy and Hannah. She knows who she is now. About the Author: Mary Bradford Clark is a manager at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Her career highlights involve servicing children and families, first as a nursery school teacher and then as a clinical social worker. For the past 20 years, she has dedicated herself to providing therapy to children and families in poverty. She is a graduate of Stanford University. Mary was born in Minneapolis, MN, and placed in a foster home. She was adopted at the age of six weeks and raised by loving parents. However, she struggled with problems of identity until she was reunited with the daughter whom she herself had given up for adoption 25 years before.

At 39, Stephen Francis is fast approaching mid-life crisis. Depressed and subject to anxiety, panic attacks, exhaustion, burnout and intermittent bouts of alcoholism, his life is going into freefall. Only when he reaches his lowest point, and seeks the help of a counselor, is he able to address the roots of his malaise, which lie in his early life as an adopted child. In this outspoken autobiography the author uncovers, with unerring frankness and honesty, the truth about his own life and that of the little spoken of—and virtually taboo—subject of adoption from the point of view of an adoptee who feels no sense of belonging to his adoptive parents. As he retraces the path that led to his shattering discovery that he is adopted—and realizes that the sense of alienation he has felt all his life is grounded in fact rather than paranoia, Stephen describes the inevitable breakdown and deconstruction of his identity and the slow healing process of reconstruction that can then begin.

From the Dust Jacket: “What makes us who we are? My adoption is a story that has happened to me. I couldn’t make it up.”

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

In a book shining with warmth, humour and compassion, she discovers that inheritance is . about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that our internal landscapes are as important as those through which we move.

Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is revelatory, redemptive and courageous, unique in its voice and universal in its reach. It is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny, and love.

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About the Author: Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. She is a poet, novelist and writer of short stories and has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and she has published two collections of stories with Picador, Why Don’t You Stop Talking and Wish I Was Here. She teaches at Newcastle University, and lives in Manchester.

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By the Same Author: The Adoption Papers (1991, Bloodaxe Books) and Trumpet: A Novel (1998).

From the Back Cover: Reflection Pond is a meditation on identity, culture, and healing in children separated from original family. Among the numerous causes for these displacements are poverty, abuse, neglect, natural disaster, epidemic, immigration, incarceration, addiction, war, genocide, oppression, and child labor and trafficking.

In the face of such loss and trauma, our children have the power for healing and growth within them. Every aspect of their lives is affected by an often solitary quest for beauty and belonging. We who raise and serve these displaced young, through our embrace, are a vital factor in their ultimate healing.

Jaiya John has shared time with thousands of uprooted children through his global rehumanizing mission and freedom work. Reflection Pond offers us his personal meditation, a looking glass for what these youth have whispered into his spirit. They have shared their need for reflection ponds: people, places, and experiences through which their own beauty and purpose are reflected back to them.

Reflection Pondis an invaluable resource for MSW programs, staff development, parents and caregivers, social workers, counselors, therapists, community leaders, youth justice, foster care, adoption, homelessness, policy and lawmakers, legal and court, child welfare, educators, advocates, and mentors.

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About the Author: Jaiya John was born into foster care in New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized freedom worker, author, speaker, poet, and youth mentor. Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission that has donated thousands of Jaiya’s books in support of social healing, and offers scholarships to displaced and vulnerable youth. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the I Will Read for You podcast, and is the founder of Freedom Project, a global initiative reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation. He is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, has authored numerous books, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand, including national and international conferences, schools, Indigenous reservations and communities, prisons and detention centers, shelters, and colleges. Jaiya is a National Science Foundation fellow, and holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors.

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By the Same Author: Beautiful (2008), Legendary (2008) and Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib (2002).

Reg Niles was an amateur genealogist who, in response to an advertisement in The New York Times, met an adoptee who ultimately introduced him to Florence Fisher, the founder of the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA), not long after he had read the story of her search in The Search for Anna Fisher. According to the Preface, “Before long, I was enlisted as a volunteer ... and became thoroughly addicted to the adoptees’ rights movement. ... I was asked to begin registering the dates of births of adoptees in the hope that natural parents and adoptees could be reunited. ... This compilation grew ... into ... the ALMA International Reunion Registry.” The book is divided into three sections: “Questions & Answers (which explore the adoptee’s situation and his search for his natural parents)”; “State-By-State List of Sources of Information (including Canadian Provinces & Selected Foreign Countries)”; and “List of National Organizations & Agencies”; as well as a Bibliography.

Each year roughly 150,000 children are adopted in the United States. There are approximately 2 million adopted children under the age of 18. Although about most are adopted by relatives, and most work out well, many children still harbor fears or concerns about being different or even abandoned. Anxiety is normal, but to help adopted children, and their parents, put aside those fears and go on to lead the most productive lives possible, the authors compiled this book of more than a hundred famous adopted individuals. From champion athletes, authors, and actors, to scientists and salesmen, teachers and preachers, Relative Origins provides examples of adopted children who went on to lead happy and successful lives. For most readers it will serve to show that adopted children are no different than the rest of us; for adopted children themselves the book provides examples and role models of people who conquered their fears, and that if they have confidence in themselves there is nothing they cannot accomplish. Some famous adopted people were:
Edward Albee [American playwright];
Sir Alexander Bustamante [It is common knowledge that Bustamante sought to shroud his background and upbringing, and substitute legends of his own making to serve his own purposes. For example, he popularized a story that at age five he was adopted by a Spanish sailor named Bustamante (hence his acquisition of the Spanish surname) and was taken to Spain where he was raised for nearly twenty years. The truth is, however, that Bustamante changed his name by deed poll in 1944, and was born into a family which by virtue of social and occupational status, fell within the plantocracy or planting class—a key component of the ruling strata of Jamaican society at the time.];
George Washington Carver;
Jacqueline Cochran [Women’s aviation pioneer] [Jacqueline Cochran, born Bessie Lee Pittman, in Pensacola, in the Florida Panhandle, was the youngest of the five children of Mary (Grant) and Ira Pittman, a skilled millwright who moved from town to town setting up and reworking saw mills. While her family was not rich, Cochran’s childhood living in small-town Florida was similar to those in other families of that time and place. Contrary to some accounts, there was always food on the table and she was not adopted, as she often claimed.];
William Lloyd Garrison;
Evonne Goolagong [Australian tennis pro];
Alexander Hamilton;
Scott Hamilton [American figure-skating champion];
John Lennon;
Hugh Leonard; Gregory Louganis; Lue Gim Gong; Catherine McCauley; James Albert Michener; Carlos Montezuma; Moses; Jim Palmer; Edgar Allan Poe; Eleanor Roosevelt; Sir Henry Morton Stanley; R. David Thomas; Maria von Trapp; Edgar Wallace; Phillis Wheatley; Daniel Hale Williams; George Hamilton; Gordon Aberdeen; Jean Le Rond d’Alembert; Josephine Antoine; Aristotle; Ingrid Bergman; John Green Brady; Angie Elizabeth Brooks; Rosie Casals; Catherine I; Nicolas Sebastien Roche Chamfort; Jean Baptiste Charbonneau; Edward Day Collins; Countée Porter Cullen; Dalai Lama; Alexandra Danilova; Peter Duchin; Peter Francisco; Sir Matthew Hale; John Hancock; Deborah Ann Harry (“Blondie” Lead Singer); Joseph Haydn; Lemuel Haynes; Herbert Hoover; Langston Hughes; Stonewall Jackson; Steven Paul Jobs; Frederick Mckinley Jones; Benito Juárez; Edmund Kean; Rudyard Kipling; John Mercer Langston; Robert Laurent; Malcolm X; Nelson Mandela; Harry Martinson; Stan Mikita; Marilyn Monroe; Anthony Newley; Gabriel Pascal; Pierre Esprit Radisson; Harold Robbins; John Baptist Rossi; Jean Jacques Rousseau; William Tecumseh Sherman; Vishwanath Pratap Singh; Robyn Smith; Dame Kiri (Janette) Te Kanawa; Giovanni Battista Tiepolo; Leo Tolstoy; Francois Truffaut; Maxime Weygand; Flip Wilson; Louisa May Alcott; Mildred Ames; Frank Baum; Anne Bernays; Rose Blue; David Budbill; Frances Hodgson Burnett; Betsy Cromer Byars; Helen Fern Daringer; Charles Dickens; Judith Guest; Nan Hayden; Roberta Hughey; Louis L’Amour; Rutgers van der Loeff; George Eliot; Lucy Maud Montgomery; Thomas Meehan; Eleanor Porter; Jim Razzi (adapter); Ovida Sebestyen; Roberta Silman; Mark Twain; Jean Webster; T. H. White.

From the Back Cover: Remedies is a deeply original autobiographical fiction that chronicles the lives of five generations of women. Patricia has a lovely way of approaching her own work which is intimate and deeply empathic to the power of language. It is evident from page one that her writing erupts from a place of necessity. It is beautifully layered and brought to life through image-driven vignettes that have been paired down into razor-sharp scenes. The stories convey tragedy and comedy in equal portions. Wombs and halos, mothers and daughters; the story is circular—the beginning has a before, and the ending is not the end. At the bottom of most pages Patricia has created a parallel existence that consists of incantations, proverbs, and recipes that provide another layer of running commentary. Patricia is emerging as a writer confident and skillful in the subtle art of hybrid writing.

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About the Author: Patricia Cotter-Busbee, an adoptee herself, knows first-hand the longings, musings and unanswerable questions forged from a childhood of doubt. She has always had a driving desire to discover her own roots. Like the main character in Remedies, Cotter-Busbee traced her family roots back to a Native American ancestry. She now lives in the Asheville, NC, area. Cotter-Busbee is currently working on a second novel, Forty-Four Houses, a sequel to Remedies. She is co-author of the 2012 anthology Two Worlds: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects, along with award-winning journalist Trace DeMeyer.

By the Same Author: Raising Our Children’s Children (with Deborah Doucette-Dudman) and Adopted Like Me.

From the Dust Jacket: Remembrance Past and Present: A Story chronicles Otterman J. Hermen’s lifelong struggle against difficult odds and the forces of an inequitable society. Starting with his early years in the Bureau, a home for unwanted and abandoned children, he reminisces about life with his foster family and his close but loveless relationship with Mama, the older woman who took him in and gave him a strong foundation with which to face the world. Faced with a life of poverty and hunger, but an unwavering desire to educate himself, he joins the army; we travel with him through post-World War II Europe and then through his harrowing experiences in Korea and Vietnam.

While the book has its share of bitterness, it is an uncompromisingly honest tale, and as the author comes to what he calls his “understanding of life, love, and sorrow,” the reader, too, comes to new realizations about how to live in the world.

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About the Author: Otterman J. Hermen was born in Pennsylvania. In the course of his life he has worked in various occupations: handyman, master sergeant in the U.S. Army, bank officer. In 1976 he was awarded a B.S. degree in financial management from Boston University and currently works as an accountant. He has two children and lives in Massachusetts.

It’s funny to me that I find it difficult when trying to write a summary of my life. Telling “my story” I realize isn’t as easy as one would think, because the story doesn’t truly begin at birth and hopefully doesn’t end at death. So how do you sum all of that up in a paragraph or two? Especially when it isn’t over yet? I can’t. One reason is that the thought of my story possibly ending when I pass is disheartening. I hope my story continues long after my human form has withered into ash, through the work I have done, through my children, family and friends. My wish is that I made a difference and that something I said our accomplished reaches another, long after I am gone; to not have lived in vain. Maybe that’s the main motivation in writing someone’s memoirs or traveling around and sharing their story with the world? This is definitely a motivating factor with me. I truly feel I am living on borrowed time, which of course makes creating a palpable documentation of what I have experienced, so important to me. Time is elementary and none of us know whether we have 25 or 100 years here; even those of us who have faced a deadly disease. My life could end tomorrow having nothing to do with cancer. Death does not discriminate. When it is your time ... that’s it! Then you’re on to the next adventure. At least that’s my philosophy. I am a cancer survivor, but I advise you, what I share with you isn’t just about fighting and surviving cancer. Cancer is really only a portion of my life and the experience is only part of who I am and what I am made up of. There were many years before the cancer situation and hopefully many more to come. This however, is a story of survival and I am optimistic it may be relevant to anyone I come in contact with today. Everything is relevant in my life and I can see the connections. My mother used to say “tell your story” ... “but which part?” was always my answer. She would shrug and say that was for me to figure out ... ”just tell it!” So, now I tell it. I have struggled with where to start and what to say for over 8 years, since setting out on this expedition. When I started, my life was headed in a specific direction. One I was very comfortable with. All of a sudden, I was derailed and headed in another. That trajectory has changed again and again as it had in all the years prior to the cancer journey. From my adoption, to searching and finding my biological family, to the discovery of the cancer that has plagued my genetics, onto my own cancer story and beyond. Always moving forward. It’s all you can do ... especially if you are to survive! Look back only to reminisce.

Have you ever felt rejected, hurt, betrayed, or anything close? Resurrection from Rejection shares the details of the life of Steven as an adopted child. He did not learn of his adoption until the age of 13, which left him searching for a sense of value for more than 20 years. In spite of his academic success and accomplishments, he still felt empty on the inside. However, he has been able to overcome those feelings and live life to the fullest. If you are dealing with low self-esteem, abandonment, rejection, childhood pains, discouragement, betrayal, or any negative feelings towards yourself; I encourage you to get a copy and learn how to heal from seven areas of pain in your life.

From the Back Cover: I was born and raised in the time of the hippies and free love. Elvis, The Beatles, The Mamas and The Papas, and The Supremes were the rage of many. I witnessed the assassination of President Kennedy and the first moon landing. On television, I Love Lucy, Ed Sullivan, The Honeymooners, and movies like King Kong and Tarzan were showing. So why would a young boy named Michael, born in 1951, who was abandoned to a Children’s Home at three years of age, and was sexually abused get a sex change at 18 to become Michelle, sow her wild oats for 10 years as a stripper and prostitute, and decide to return to Michael at 29 years old once again. Travel along with me as I relive my experiences with you, including all the highs and lows of my life. Come share with me in my memories, have some laughs, and at the same time shed a few tears. These are my memories.

From the Back Cover: Dear Ellen: I’m the grown-up version of the daughter you gave up for adoption in 1969. My name is Kathleen—Kathleen Mary Hern—and most people call me Katie. I know that Catholic Charities told you I received your name and address, so at least this letter won’t come as a complete shock. So uh ... hello.

Thus begins the extraordinary correspondence between twenty-six-year-old Katie Hern and her birthmother, Ellen McGarry Carlson. After decades of no contact, Katie and Ellen begin the tentative dance of getting to know each other, a process that reveals their thoughts and feelings—some joyful, some painful—about their respective experiences as daughter and mother separated at birth.

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About the Author: Katie Hern teaches writing at John F. Kennedy University in Northern California and has written for numerous publications. She lives in Oakland, where she is currently at work on her first novel.

Ellen McGarry Carlson, a homemaker and college student, lives in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

From the Back Cover: We held each other closely and in the house sat holding hands while we talked, holding onto what we had both discovered. I could have sat there for hours just staring at her! For the first time in my life I was looking at a blood relation, and in a way it was looking at a reflection of myself.

There is now new hope for the many adopted New Zealanders who wish to seek out their birth origins. Following recent law changes, more and more adopted people are now successfully tracing their natural or birth parents.

This book tells of a group of New Zealanders who have sought to be reunited with their birth parents. Written by a journalist who is herself adopted, it is a fascinating and often moving testament to the power of our need to know about our origins.

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About the Author: Ann Howarth is a Wellington journalist. She attended the Wellington Polytechnic journalism course in 1979, and spent her first years in journalism as a reporter on provincial newspapers. After travelling overseas for two years she joined the Dominion in Wellington, where she worked as police and then health reporter. After writing this book she returned to the Dominion.

Ann Howarth is adopted, and began searching for her birth mother in 1979. In 1986 she met her maternal birth grandmother and other relatives. Her birth mother died of cancer in 1983, aged forty-two.