This is a sequel to Family Secrets: Letters to My Granddaughters.

A NOTE FROM GRACE: Several years back I enrolled in a writing class called, “Your Dreams and Writing.” While taking the class I dreamed I was asked to write a manuscript. When it was finished I took it with me to a park. While sitting on a park bench watching a little girl play with her mom I suddenly saw a tidal wave coming from afar off. Quickly I placed my manuscript on top of the park pavilion thinking it would be safe there. In the next scene of the dream I was in class and it was time for me to hand in my assignment. I told the teacher I did not have my manuscript because of the tidal wave that had hit the park. Although I had tried to keep it safe atop the pavilion it had been destroyed. About that time the little girl entered the room with my manuscript. I knelt down beside her as she handed it to me. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “You know I lost my mom in that tidal wave.” I replied, “Yes honey, I know you did.” And that was the end of the dream. It is possible you hold that manuscript in your hands ... rescued by a motherless child and finally published for other children who survived a tidal wave that took their mother.

An account of the frustrations, tactics and victories of a seven year search in Ontario. An invaluable collection of hints, ideas of where to find information, how to organize it once you have it, and then HOW to draw conclusions. Twelve known reunions as a direct result of this book.

The Reunion Book contains over 70 stories by people who were reunited after being separated by adoption. The stories are compelling and cover a broad spectrum of experiences with participants ranging from ages 16 to 61, having been reunited from 4 weeks to 18 years and discovering a variety of different circumstances. The most important aspect is that they have all survived and benefitted greatly by knowing their families.

Reunions in Spring: Meditations for a Holiday Table: Adoption Search and Families is based on civilization’s oldest adoption memoir: the book of Exodus. It enjoys a lively retelling every spring through the literary genre of the “haggadah” used exclusively to retell the stories of Moses, his adoptive Egyptian mother and his Hebrew birth family. Bring memoirs, journaling and the celebrations of spring to a richer level through this haggadah and its treasures of modern adoption triad psychology and the Passover oral tradition.

From the Back Cover: After a traumatic reunion with her own birth mother, Pamela Slaton realized things: She wanted to help other adoptees have happier reunions with their birth families and she had a unique skill to do so—a strong ability to find what others could not. Reunited shares the riveting stories of some of Pam’s most powerful cases from her long career as an investigative genealogist, and the lessons she’s learned along the way. From the identical twins separated at birth, unknowingly part of a secret study on development, to the man who finally met his birth mother in the nick of time, Reunited is a collection of these unforgettable moments, told by the woman who orchestrated and witnessed them firsthand. Both heartbreaking and inspiring, it will move anyone who knows the true life-affirming power of family.

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About the Author: Pamela Slaton is known as a miracle worker by the nearly three thousand adoptees she’s helped. After founding her own practice and using a never-quit policy to get around restrictive state laws, she has been able to locate 90 percent of her clients’ missing relatives, and has earned a reputation as one of the country’s leading investigative genealogists. She helped Darryl “DMC” McDaniels find his birth parents on VH1’s Emmy Award-winning documentary My Adoption Journey, and now facilitates powerful reunions from start to finish on her Oprah Winfrey Network show, Searching For.... Pamela lives in New Jersey with her family.

Jean and her twin sister Inez were born on November 9, 1929 in the coal fields of West Virginia. They were born into destitution to a woman that had already given away three of her children. They were taken to the orphanage in Charleston, WV. Jean was very sickly and not expected to live. Inez was healthy and was adopted out the back door to a wealthy Charleston couple. A few days later, another wealthy couple discovered Jean and adopted her and neither couple were aware that the babies were twins. Jean was raised as an only child by Wm. and Velva Goff in Logan, WV. She became an excellent dancer and won the Shirley Temple talent contest and was offered a screen test in Hollywood, but her mother forbade her to go. She enrolled in an exclusive ladies college, but eloped with the high school football star. Their marriage produced three children, with the youngest dying within hours of his birth. Jean had no idea that her husband, Duncan, was a womanizer. He was the Justice of the Peace and could keep his affairs hidden. They also owned an exclusive ladies dress shop. Duncan decided that they needed to sell the dress shop and move to Sarasota where her parents had retired to. Jean was unaware of the reasons “why” he insisted on moving. They bought a new home and another very exclusive ladies dress shop. They became friends with another couple. Eventually, Duncan would divorce Jean and take everything that they owned. He then married her best friend. Jean’s beloved daddy had passed away and with the divorce her life descended into chaos and disaster. Her mother kept all of her inheritance from her daddy’s estate and Jean was forced into the workplace in her early forties. Her life continued into a very dark arena. She became an alcoholic and lived with several different men. She learned to shoplift in order to eat. She met a man from Alabama, who was first cousin to the devil himself. She became a battered woman long before the term became vogue and the justice system ever recognized it. On numerous occasions the man beat her to a bloody pulp and left her for dead. After years of abuse, she was able to escape from him and move to Ohio. There she met another man, Mike, who she fell in love with and married. He also had a dark past. Mike searched for several years on the computer until, “with the help of the Good Lord above,” he was able to find Jean’s twin. This is a story that you have to read to believe that it really happened. If you have been adopted I hope that this will give you hope to never give up. And, if you have been a battered woman, I admonish to run from that situation just as fast as you can; it can cost you your life.

When the wife of an English clergyman gives birth to a little dark skinned baby girl, it is discovered that this child is the result of the mother’s affair with a young Nigerian student. The family shuns the child and wants to be rid of the scandalous situation. A compassionate nun, the Mother Superior of a home for the elderly in Thames Ditton, hears of the sad rejection, and offers to take the child in, eventually adopting the little girl as her own. As war breaks out, the Reverend Mother takes in many more children, creating a haven of safety for hapless little ones who have lost their parents and fear for their very lives. But only Mary is her child, whom she fondly calls “my Mary.” The attacks on London force the evacuation of the children to the south of England, but the Reverend Mother stays behind to care for the elderly. Little Mary endures frightening war experiences and falls into the hands of abusers. When she returns to Thames Ditton at the age of fourteen, Mary is torn between what she wants to do and what Reverend Mother insists she must do. Submitting to the will of her benefactor, she trains as a nurse. Later, she marries and experiences the excitement of life in Paris, the Bahamas and Italy. The marriage, however, brings heartache and crumbles. But through the trauma of it all, Mary is aware of a driving force in her life that ultimately brings her to Jesus Christ and the happiness that Reverend Mother always wanted for her.

From the Dust Jacket: Only in a world turned upside down could this extraordinary true-life adventure have taken place.

The great-granddaughter of a witch from the Isle of Man, the adopted daughter of a Balinese rajah, hostess of one of the most glamorous hotels in the Far East, a prisoner of the Japanese for two horror-packed years, and, as Surabaya Sue, an ardent supporter of the Indonesian revolution, K’tut Tantri is well acquainted with the unexpected. Adventure and courage run strong in her blood.

It was in a Hollywood movie theater that she first discovered Bali and knew it for the place where she belonged. She had hoped to live and paint there quietly among the island’s simple people, but destiny, in the form of a stalled car and a delightful young prince, took a hand and revised her plans. She was formally adopted by the prince’s father, and as the fourth-born child of a rajah who loved listening to stories of Paul Revere, George Washington, “Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln,she walked straight into a world of wonder and delight. Though she came to know the peasants of the Balinese kampongs, she knew also, and intimately, the life of a Balinese palace with all its ritual and tradition.

This world lasted for only a few years. With war came the Japanese, presumably as deliverers overthrowing Dutch rule but in reality as tyrants. K’tut Tantri stayed on to join the underground movement agitating for Indonesian independence, and was eventually captured, imprisoned, tortured. Then with the end of hostilities she chose once again to ally herself with the Indonesians—this time in their resistance against the British and the returning Dutch. A friend of the leaders around Sukarno, she was instrumental in getting the Indonesian story to the outside world, and on several occasions she lent herself to enterprises requiring the combined talents of Mata Hari and T.E. Lawrence.

K’tut Tantri has an observant eye, an understanding knowledge, and she writes with spirit. Her story is a deeply moving personal drama and a vivid commentary on a period of crucial change in an ancient, romantic country.

This is the story of my unique and difficult adoption search. My purpose in sharing my story is to help other adoptees who may be dealing with the same issues or preparing to search for their birth family. I also want to bring awareness to those who are not adopted about the emotions surrounding adopted children. If my story inspires one person, its purpose has been served.

From the Publisher: Organized into eighteen chapters ranging from open adoption to adoption law reform, The Right to Know Who You Are presents an encyclopedic overview of the life-long adoption experience. Each topic is well-documented, encouraging the reader to turn to other sources for further exploration or research.

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About the Author: Keith Griffith was in the forefront of successful reform adoption laws New Zealand which first effort anywhere world to secure open records legislation. He is an adopted person who has published four books on and several articles social work journals. Through research for the Adult Adoption Bill (New Zealand), he compiled 16 volumes of material on New Zealand adoption. New Zealand Adoption Handbook was funded by the Law Foundation and supervised at the Victoria Law School, Wellington, New Zealand. He is a well known speaker in the U.S.A. and Canada.

At 2½ years of age I was stolen from my mother. At 18 years of age I learned that my parents were not my parents. This is my story of discovering who I really am and finding my real mother.

From the Back Cover: Sara was born in 1936 into a Jewish family in Poland, Europe. Her first memories are from the age of four or five, when she was left homeless and without her family, wandering the streets of the villages of Poland during the Second World War. Alone in the cruel world, subjected to the mean acts of evil people, disease, hunger, and degradation, she also found sparks of light humanity. A stranger found her and presented her as a Christian child to an orphanage in a convent. From there, she was adopted by a Christian couple, and was raised as their child until the age of 13.

This is a revealing autobiography, which moves the reader and carries him along on the journey. It sometimes reads like a thriller. The author couldn’t tell her story for many years, until she managed to break her self-imposed silence to tell her life story. The story moves back and forth from her present reality, which seems calm, solid and successful, to her childhood traumas.

Her biological family, parents and brother, did not survive the Holocaust. Her extended family, which finally found her after the war, tried to return her to her Jewish origins and family, but she refused, and her adopted parents fought them in the Polish courts. The court supported her biological family, and she was brought to Israel to live with them.

This book will appeal to a wide audience because it is not only about a unique and individual story, but it also deals with universal dilemmas such as religious identity, loyalty, etc.

Sara has written her story, as well as her feelings, her thoughts, and her dreams, while constantly dealing with her scarred and bruised soul. Beyond her childhood story lie the adult questions and dilemmas of identity and borrowed identity, of religion and nationality, of loyalty to biological or adopted family, of keeping or revealing deep-seated secrets. Most of these dilemmas cannot be answered, and the author lives with them every day of her adult life.

From the Dust Jacket: When Rita Mae Brown writes, people often end up laughing out loud. So naturally, when the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle, Venus Envy, and the Mrs. Murphy mystery series writes about her own life, it’s a hoot, a rollicking ride with an independent, opinionated woman who changed literary history—the first openly lesbian writer to break into the mainstream. Now. in Rita Will, she fells all ... and tells it hilariously.

It is often said that the best comedy springs from hard times. And Rita Mae Brown has seen plenty of those. In this irresistibly readable memoir, she recounts the drama of her birth as the illegitimate daughter of a flighty blue blood who left her in an orphanage. The sickly baby was quickly rescued by relatives eager to adopt her but afraid she would not survive the long journey home. Her determination to live, and shock everyone by doing it, has become a metaphor for her entire life.

Though raised by these loving adoptive parents and a wacky host of other interfering kin, Rita Mae Brown learned early on to be tough and to speak her mind. It was her refusal to be anything but herself that often brought her the most trouble. Here she tells of her tempestuous relationship with her adoptive mother, the mythic Juts of the novels Six of One and Bingo, who called her “the ill,” for illegitimate, whenever she lost her temper, and who swore she’d introduce Rita Mae to the social graces, including the dreaded cotillion, even if it killed them both.

Here, too, Rita Mae reveals how her headstrong support of social causes almost cost her a hard-earned education and her outspokenness in the early days of the women’s movement got her drummed out of NOW, and how the release of her first novel, the scandalous classic Rubyfruit Jungle, made her an overnight phenomenon—the most famous openly gay person in America—and took her from the heights of the New York Times bestseller list to the surreal playhouse that is Hollywood.

Through it all, Rita Mae has drawn strength from her profound bond with animals, from her abiding affection for the South and its native tongue, and from the great passions of her life. She writes with close-to-the-bone honesty about woman-woman love ... including her love-at-first-sight relationship with a popular actor and her headline-making romance with tennis great Martina Navratilova. With her trademark humor, she unflinchingly bares her own flaws, flouting public opinion yet displaying the unflappable good sense that shows through everything she writes.

A look into a woman’s mind and a writer’s irrepressible spirit, Rita Will is quintessential Rita Mae Brown—a book that feels like a kick-your-shoes-off visit with an old friend.

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About the Author: Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, Southern Discomfort, Sudden Death, High Hearts, Bingo, Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers’ Manual, Venus Envy, Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War, and Riding Shotgun. With her tiger cat, Sneaky Pie, she also collaborates on the Mrs. Murphy mystery series, including Wish You Were Here, Rest in Pieces, Murder at Monticello, Pay Dirt, and Murder, She Meowed. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, she lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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By the Same Author: Rubyfruit Jungle (1973, Daughters, Inc.); Six of One (1978, Harper & Row); Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers’ Manual (1988, Bantam Books); Bingo (1988, Bantam Books); Loose Lips (1999, Bantam Books); The Sand Castle (2008, Grove Press); Animal Magnetism: My Life with Critters Great and Small (2009, Ballantine Books); A Nose for Justice (2010, Ballantine Books); Murder Unleashed (2012, Ballantine Books); and Cakewalk (2016, Bantam Books), among many, many others.

From the Dust Jacket: Born an a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years old. For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking—rape, torture, deprivation--until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.

Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.

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About the Author: Somaly Mam is cofounder and president of AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations), based in Cambodia, and president of the Somaly Mam Foundation, based in the United States. Under her leadership, the two organizations seek to save and socially reintegrate victims of sexual slavery in Southeast Asia. Mam was named a CNN Hero and a Glamour Woman of the Year in 2006. She lives in Cambodia and France.

From the Back Cover: A Wandering. A Knightmare. An Awakening.

Soon after Mark Shaw’s stepsons and infamous Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight made international headlines leading to the coach’s firing, Shaw woke up to a spiritual journey that led him down the road to a miracle. Born in small-town Indiana after World War II, he traversed America trying his hand at a multitude of careers. As a criminal defense attorney, newspaper co-publisher, television personality, radio talk show host, film producer, and prolific author, he crossed paths with celebrities including Paul Newman, James Stewart, Jack Nicholson, Arnold Palmer and Joan Baez. But it wasn’t until losing his marriage and stepchildren to the drama of the “Knightmare,” that he could face his demons and welcome a Higher Power into his world. After falling in love again and graduating from seminary, Shaw, childless at sixty-five years old, was now ready for his destiny, one that would complete him. An inspiring and true tale filled with stories that will surprise, amuse, and move you, Road to a Miracle will open your heart, mind and spirit to any miracle that may be winding its way toward you.

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About the Author: Mark Shaw is a former criminal defense attorney and television personality turned author of 24 books. They include biographies of Thomas Merton, Jonathan Pollard, and Melvin Belli, and the novel No Peace for the Wicked, to be released in the fall 2011.

When Jim Roastbeef Hume embarks on a quest to sprinkle his father’s ashes in each of the forty-eight contiguous states, he has no idea that a series of bizarre and ridiculous adventures await. But nothing will deter him from fulfilling the promise he made to his dying father—not a brief incarceration in Iowa or a punctured lung in South Dakota. As he travels across the country, he picks up numerous new friends, presides over the ultimate party, poses as a lesbian’s boyfriend, and gives away a very pregnant bride in a Las Vegas wedding. And who could have dreamed that somewhere amidst the craziness of dropping ashes from a crop duster and finding Elvis’s toenail, Roastbeef would stumble upon a lucrative new career? About the Author: David Jerome has written jokes for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show and performed his own monologue on the ABC late night talk show Into the Night with Rick Dees. From 1994 to 1996, he wrote and published a comedy newspaper, The Irreverent Times. Under the pen name James E. Spamm Jr., he authored a collection of humorous fan letters to celebrities and other notables called I’m a Big Fan.

In 1974 in the United States, Robin Jenkins (Weideger) was adopted. She spent her childhood growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Throughout her life a main thread has been her desire to discover and meet her birth mother. Setting off in the hope of self discovery, she traveled the States in search of completion. Little did she know, she would find her soul mate and make an innovative finding that would re-sculpt her life. Uncover why Scotland is significant to this story, hear why Robin has presented herself as a brave, face-painted warrior and watch her battle unfold. During her journey of self-discovery, Robin has experienced the brightest dreams as well as the darkest nightmares. Robin’s love of music is evident and she takes you through a musical playlist throughout her life. Devastating troubles and uplifting experiences have all in turn created the road that has lead her to ultimate fulfillment. As she herself says, “Everyone has a bestselling story to write!”

From the Dust Jacket: Liverpool Street Station, London, May 1939: A 3-year-old Jewish child and her twin sister, just arrived in the Kindertransport evacuating Jewish children from Germany, await the start of a new life.

Adopted by a childless Welsh Baptist minister and his wife, Susi Bechhöfer and her sister Lotte are given a new identity. In an attempt to erase all traces of their previous existence, Susi is renamed Grace and Lotte becomes Eunice. Only fifty years later does Grace Stocken, a Christian, and former nursing sister living in Rugby, discover the terrible truth about her background: she is the daughter of Rosa Bechhöfer, a young Jewish woman who perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

The discovery of her real identity propels Grace—now once again calling herself Susi, the name given by Rosa—on a painful and courageous quest in search of her past and for the surviving members of her natural family. In Munich she learns the truth about her father, including details of his service as a soldier for the Fithrer during the war years. She finds Orthodox-Jewish cousins in New York and a non-Jewish half sister in Germany. In the course of her quest, she confronts a dark secret from her own past: the psychological and sexual abuse she endured as a child from the Baptist minister who adopted her.

In the light of these shattering revelations Susi urgently needed to reappraise her life and most of all shed her status as a victim. Now a practising psychotherapist she has come to terms with her past, but the memory of Rosa, the mother she never knew, will always be with her.

A remarkable story, this is the tragic, yet ultimately uplifting account of one woman’s determined journey in search of her past and herself.

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About the Author: Jeremy Josephs’ books include Inside the Alliance, Swastika Over Paris, Dr. Jack: Calcutta’s Pavement Doctor (which was made into a BBC documentary), Hungerford: One Man’s Massacre, Murder in the Family and A Chateau in the Dordogne. Trained as a barrister, he moved to France with his family in 1992 to take up a post at the law faculty at Montpellier University.

From the Publisher: Born Jewish, Rose Berl’s identity was taken from her in 1942, when her parents gave away their little girl to a Polish Catholic couple, in a desperate attempt to save her from the Nazis. Now known as Alicja Swiatek, at age five she discovered that she was Jewish. She remained with her adoptive parents, but the revelation reverberated throughout her hometown, where anti-Semitism still persisted.

In her early twenties, distraught about her future in Poland, Alicja discovered American relatives who supported her. This drew the attention of Communist authorities and she was arrested. Released temporarily, she fled Poland, tearfully leaving her adoptive parents behind.

She arrived in America in 1962, married a Jewish man, and assumed yet another name, Lucia Weitzman. Locking away much of her past inside, she focused on family and community. But beneath the veneer of life as a traditional Jewish wife and mother, Lucia harbored a secret and lingering spiritual angst. Years later, deep in mourning following the loss of her husband, long-suppressed emotions rose to the surface and Lucia confronted God at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

Why had He allowed her to be orphaned yet again? Why had she been spared as a child? And what did her experiences reveal about her life’s purpose? Unexpectedly, she sensed a comforting response.

Lucia considered brushing the incident aside, but more unexplained experiences followed that seemed to call on her to decipher their messages. At first frightened, she learned to trust her spiritual sensibilities that gave deeper meaning to her experiences while answering larger questions about God’s presence during times of evil and suffering. She began to share with her son, Mitchell, her mysterious writings and dreams.

He was at first concerned about the reaction he thought his mother would encounter in sharing her experiences with the wider world. But as her resolve strengthened, so did his. Together, they set out to tell her story.

The result is the Rose Temple, a true tale of one woman’s transformation from child Holocaust survivor to spiritual messenger. In an age of escalating hatred and violence, it is a testament to the power of choice that lies within each of us, to transform and attempt to heal both ourselves and the troubled world in which we live.

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About the Author: Mitchell Weitzman is an attorney, columnist, and author. He lives in the Washington-Baltimore area with his wife, Beverly, and their two children, Paula and Joshua.

From the Back Cover: Rose’s Story is a moving and captivating account of a woman who, shuffled through our foster care system as a child, faced extraordinary stresses without the support of family or a stable home.

Despite the incredible deprivations Rose experienced even into adulthood, she developed into an open, generous woman with a full and interesting personality. She fought for her rights as an individual and as a mother, setting a legal precedent for other parents whose lives, like hers, may have slipped through the cracks in our helping systems.

Everyone can benefit from reading this book. But it is of particular value and importance to social service and mental health professionals because of Rose’s long and close involvement with those systems. Her story shows how the human service professions can help and harm clients. The good intentions of our helping systems serve no good purpose if the individual’s story isn’t heard.

Marshall Ginsburg
Professor of Psychiatry
Director Clinical Affairs
Department of Psychiatry
University Hospital of Cincinnati

Born in San Diego County in the 1950s; raised in an upper middle class residential coastal paradise, known as Point Loma, located on the peninsula in southern California. Victoria Lynne’s childhood memories found her always the outcast; never understanding why. Adopted from birth to a loving family, apparently so frightened of losing this chance at parenting; choosing to uphold this vow of secrecy, at all costs; ultimately taking it to their graves. This young woman was launched into obsession; the paper chase of a lifetime! The years devoted to the search for truth and identity became the undertaking that no one could ever prepare for; discovering what lies beneath the surface; lies for protection. There were no directions for the road to recovery. An inspiring true story of adoption betrayal: “to be told, or not to be told”—That decision is yours.

Family History.

I believe dreams are the most precious jewels a child can possess. My earliest, most treasured childhood dream was to one day become a writer. But when I was taken from my birth mother at age three, my young life and my dreams were shattered by those who systematically ingrained into my fragile psyche the notion that I was not good enough, smart enough or qualified enough to achieve anything worthwhile. Growing up feeling and believing I was unworthy of love, respect, protection or even friendship, my life, which was plagued by a deeply-rooted sense of guilt and shame, descended into the depths of despair. Emotional abuse, repeated victimization, deep depression, suicide attempts, addiction, survival sex and other varying horrors became the staples of my existence. After what seemed an eternity, I somehow found the strength to turn my life around and trudge up the long and tortuous path to self-love. Ruptured Heart is the first book in a series in which I chronicle my painstaking journey to freedom. May all your tribulations be lighter for reading my story, because you are not alone. And ... may you be inspired and never give up on your own precious dreams.

From the Dust Jacket: How does an adoptee find the courage to face a parent they’ve never met? What is the impact of relinquishing a child on a birth mother’s life? How can adoptive parents help their children understand what it means to be adopted?

These questions and others are explored in Sacred Connections, which features 24 stories of adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents. These are people from all over the world who share the experience of finding the sacred connections in their lives. People like:

• Jonathan McGowan, who was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of eighteen. His adoptive parents, Sandy and Bob, searched for his birth family in Korea. His birth mother, Sook, flew to the United States to donate the bone marrow that saved Jonathan’s life.

• Jennifer Huntsberry, who was thirteen years old when she became pregnant. Although she knew she wasn’t prepared to parent her child, she also knew she couldn’t relinquish her right to see him again. She searched for an agency that provided open adoption. Her story gives us a glimpse into an adoption in which the birth family becomes extended family.

• Jim Rockwell, who was sixty years old when he set out to find his birth family. He discovered he was the youngest of fourteen children and found his seven living siblings, who had waited a lifetime for his return.

All of us tell and re-tell our personal stories to make and re-make meaning of our personal experience. The families in Sacred Connections invite the reader to participate in journeys that are both unique and universal—journeys that can enrich our understanding of our own family ties.

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About the Author: Dr. Mary Ann Koenig, a clinical psychologist, is co-director of Wirth Associates, a psychological practice in Exton, Pennsylvania. Dr. Koenig, herself an adoptee, has been assisting adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents for the past twenty years. She has written and lectured on the unique developmental issues that arise in foster and adoptive families. She lives in Birchrunville, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children.

Niki Berg is an award-winning portrait photographer and lecturer. Since 1982, her work has been exhibited, published, and reviewed throughout the United States. She is a recipient of an Artist Fellowship Award and the Catalogue Project Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has been a fellow at Yaddo and The MacDowell Artist Colonies. Niki is mother of two grown daughters, Jessica and Karina, and lives in New York City with her husband, Peter.

From the Publisher: Spanning thirty years, this true-life story is an emotion filled journey of painful choices, loss, survival and hope. Recounted in the voices of the author, Susan Mello Souza, and her daughter, Joanne, it sheds light on their individual perspectives. The social stigma attached to unwed mothers during the Sixties gives seventeen-year-old Susan no choice but to give up her baby for adoption. In the eight days she spends with her daughter, she develops a special connection and resolves to search for her when the latter turns twenty-one. Unfortunately she is unable to keep her promise as tragedy strikes again and she loses her sixteen-year-old daughter, Jackie, to leukemia. Overcome with grief and heartache, she postpones her quest, and only much later, when her first-born is thirty, is she able to summon the strength to finally trace her. The same determination and courage that enable Susan to endure teenage pregnancy and relinquishment of her baby, also sees her through a divorce, the trauma of Jackie’s death, and eventually helps her to reunite with Joanne and heal her own life. Her story is a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit and the bonding power of motherhood. Birth mothers and adoptees will be able to identify with Susan and Joanne’s candidly shared experiences.

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About the Author: In 1968, at the age of seventeen, Susan Mello Souza surrendered her first-born daughter to adoption. Her birth-mother experience has led Susan to become an active member in various birth mother support groups, while providing her the opportunity to assist several individuals in their reunions. Born and raised in New Bedford, Susan lived there until 1988 when she and her husband, Jay, moved their family of three girls, Jackie, Kristine and Beth, to Acushnet, MA.

Joanne Medeiros Harrington was adopted in October 1968, when she was just three weeks old, and named after her adoptive parents, Joe and Ann Medeiros. She grew up in Fall River, MA with three younger brothers, Jay, Don and Rick, who were each a surprise to Joe and Ann since the doctors had informed them of their inability to conceive, hence Joanne’s adoption.

From the Publisher: Santa Fe Blogger traces an adoptee’s journey to wholeness and authenticity. One blog post at a time, Author and Blogger Elaine Pinkerton comes to grips with the lack of a family tree and the need to “adopt” who one really is. In 48 blog posts, this inspiring collection documents the journey of an adult adoptee. After years of searching, Pinkerton finally accepts the lack of a traditional family tree and ultimately “adopts” herself. As a follow-up to her memoir, The Goodbye Baby, Santa Fe Blogger is a must read for anyone who is adopted or who cares about adoption issues.

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About the Author: Elaine Pinkerton is a long-time resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico. In addition to writing for magazines and newspapers, she is the author of several popular non-fiction and fiction books. She is a world traveler, educator focused on working with young children, labyrinth facilitator, and athlete-skier, hiker, former marathon runner. She was recently honored to be featured in Patricia Shapiro’s Coming Home to Yourself: Eighteen Wise Women Reflect on Their Journeys. Pinkerton, grandmother of three, holds MA degrees in literature from the University of Virginia and from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Writing is her first love, but she’s held many other jobs, including ski coach, technical writer, defensive driving instructor, and elementary school librarian. She is a freelance journalist, with articles published in Runner’s World, Family Circle, New Mexico Magazine and Tumbleweeds Family Magazine.

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By the Same Author: The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption (2012, AuthorHouse) and All the Wrong Places (2017, Pocol Press), among others.

This is a story about an adoptee’s search for his biological roots that lasted over 25 years. It relates how one little piece of information led to another, and then another, and how there eventually seemed to be no end to the amount of doors to open and things to find out. Yet there also seemed to be no end to the amount of brick walls, dead ends, and stumbling blocks in his path. The story of his search started in February of 1968, when he held his newly born daughter for the first time. After his search had ground to a halt a couple years later, there was an incredible coincidence in a small classroom in a large Cleveland college. At one point, a number of newly found cousins, aunts and uncles swore that they had seen pictures of him dead and in a coffin. The story continues to one sunny morning in July of 1996 on the top of a windy hill in a cemetery where he knelt in prayer at a long-forgotten grave. This story will inspire any adoptee or anyone searching for lost family members never to give up, to look around all corners, to be patient, and to use each piece of information with consideration for anyone who might be hurt by its being divulged. All the information that e uncovered was obtained without having to go to court. Persistence, prayers, common sense, curiosity, and patience paid off. About the Author: Lawrence A. Weeks, was born in Cleveland, OH, and was given up at birth to be adopted. Just before he was two years old, he was adopted by a family in Euclid, OH, where his adopted mother still lives. Despite being told that his parents died in a car crash after he was just born, Mr. Weeks embarked on a rather long search to find out things that most people take for granted: birth certificate, birth parents, birth siblings, etc. He graduated from Euclid High School and then got a Bachelor’s Degree from Cleveland State with a major in history. He now lives in Mentor, OH, with his wife of over 25 years. Mr. Weeks is a business skills instructor at a medical-vocational school near his home. He has been a speaker with the Greater Cleveland Right To Life and does volunteer work at his local chapter. His oldest daughter, the one whose birth initiated his long search, lives in Green Bay and has two children. His youngest daughter is an Occupational Therapist, and his son is finishing law school at Cleveland Marshall Law School in Cleveland.

Story about Heagel/Herriman “Scatterlings” and how they found each other after they were adopted and grown up.

From the Back Cover: Patti Post arrives back on the Earthly Plane in 1951 with the ability to smell people’s deepest darkest secrets, read auras and communicate with the spirit world. As a child, she uses these skills to confound her adoptive parents, brother and school teachers. At seventeen, she packs her talents away, marries a troubled Viet Nam vet, moves to the high arctic and becomes a teacher. Upon returning south, she devotes her misplaced energy to more realistic pursuits such as trying to find her birth mother and her true self.

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About the Author: Rosalie Lawrence, memoirist, and Dr. Patricia Post, academic, were born at the very same instant to the very same mother in the very same room in The Evangeline Home for Unwed Mothers in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

One of them can see your aura, the other can’t.

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Compiler’s Note: I have chosen to categorize this book as non-fiction, although the author allows that it is “a work of fiction and fact.”