From the Dust Jacket: In 1950, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg lived with their two sons on New York’s Lower East Side. The boys visited their father’s machine shop on Houston Street, rode subways to the Bronx Zoo, were avid Brooklyn Dodger fans. Abruptly one day their life together dissolved—Julius was imprisoned, then Ethel; accused of “The Crime of the Century” they were ultimately sent to the electric chair; their sons were shunted between reluctant relatives and children’s shelters. Eventually they were adopted and protected from the public eye.

Here for the first time the sons tell their own story, weaving the nightmare events of 1950-1954—trial, appeals, execution of their parents and court battles over guardianship—with many of the letters Ethel and Julius wrote while in prison. In this correspondence, much of it previously unpublished, are the concerns, emotions and politics of the Rosenbergs as they sought to calm their children and themselves while the United States government warned, “Talk or Die!”

The sons also discuss their adoptive parents, Anne and Abel Meeropol, who provided them with security and emotional stability. And they talk about their own growth in the politically turbulent 1960s.

They remain convinced of their parents’ innocence and present arguments and evidence—some of it never before published—supporting their claims. This book is a vital social document, told simply yet intensely, persuasively. It is a book the reader will not be able to ignore.

The second edition, with three new chapters, firmly reiterates the Meeropols’ belief that their parents were innocent. One new chapter challenges the recently published and controversial book The Rosenberg File by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, which persuaded many people who had been convinced of the Rosenbergs’ innocence that Julius Rosenberg was in fact a Soviet agent. Another focuses on the sons’ successful campaign over the past eleven years to open up previously restricted files on the case. Thanks to their efforts, they now have conclusive evidence that Judge Irving R. Kaufman conducted anything but an impartial trial.

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Robert Meeropol received his B.A. and M.A. in anthropology at the University of Michigan, taught anthropology at Western New England College and is working on a doctoral project in urban anthropology. He is cooperating with the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case and lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and daughter, Jennifer.

Michael Meeropol received his B.A. in economics at Swarthmore, another B.A. and his M.A. at Cambridge University in England and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is an Assistant Professor at Western New England College and is a member of the Union for Radical Political Economics, He is cooperating with the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case and lives with his wife, Ann, and two children, Ivy and Gregory, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

From the Back Cover: In We Learn Nothing, satirical cartoonist Tim Kreider turns his funny, brutally honest eye to the dark truths of the human condition, asking big questions about human-sized problems: What if you survive a brush with death and it doesn’t change you? Why do we fall in love with people we don’t even like? How do you react when someone you’ve known for years unexpectedly changes genders?

With a perfect combination of humor and pathos, these essays, peppered with Kreider’s signature cartoons, leave us with newfound wisdom and a unique prism through which to examine our own chaotic journeys through life. These are the conversations you have only with best friends or total strangers, late at night over drinks, near closing time.

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About the Author: Tim Kreider has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Week, The Men’s Journal, and Nerve.com. His popular comic strip, The Pain—When Will It End?, ran in alternative weeklies for twelve years and has been collected in three books by Fantagraphics. He is the author of two collections of essays, We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You. He divides his time between New York City and an undisclosed location on the Chesapeake Bay.

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Compiler’s Note: According to Publishers Weekly, “In the moving ‘Sister World,’ adoptee Kreider reveals how meeting his biological sisters teaches him about the depths and degrees of relatedness, and how to handle uncharacteristic profusions of love.”

From the Back Cover: Brooks grew up as the only child of a struggling single mother in inner-city Pittsburgh. He was battling racial stereotypes at school and searching for a place among his peers. Then he was told at age eleven that he was adopted. He did not know it at the time, but Brooks had actually been born to a white biological mother who descended from Lithuanian Jews and a black Kenyan foreign-student father.

Years after that stunning revelation, Brooks escaped the ghetto and traveled to search for his heritage. He found his biological mother in London with his previously unknown British siblings. He then located his biological father and extended family in Nairobi. His international search and the resulting reunions have profoundly affected three families in the United States, England, and Kenya.

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About the Author: Thomas Brooks has published several articles and spoken frequently on the radio and in other forums. In 1998, Brooks won a notional award through Career Communications Group in the “Technical Sales and Marketing” category. In 2001 he cofounded an online business, www.MinorityProfessionalNetwork.com, which provides a global Career, Economic ad Lifestyle Connection™. Brooks lives with his wife and children outside of Houston, Texas, USA.

When he was nine, John Sheen was told that his parents were dead. It was then, having found them alive and well, that he was told that he had been adopted. This is his story, and how he came to find his birth family after sixty-four years. It gives an insight of the adoption process in the 1940s through the documents and letters discovered. Highly emotional at times, but laced with humour, this story will be of interest to both adopted and adopters. Having spent his working life as a boat builder, John Sheen is now retired, and still lives, with his wife, on the Isle of Wight, to where he was adopted. In the last few years his sight has been fully restored by two cornea transplants. He has three sons, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. He also has a family that he knew nothing about until he was sixty-four years old.

From the Dust Jacket: What Are You Doing Here? reveals in captivating detail the dual-outsider dilemma of black women who enter the heavy metal, punk, and hardcore music worlds. Laina Dawes walks readers through her lifelong love of metal, subsequent ostracism in the black community, and very real racism and sexism she has encountered while in pursuit of community spirit. Her keen observations are buttressed by stories from scores of other black women. Throughout, these headstrong pioneers proudly praise the emotional catharsis of loud, fast music. You will never see heavy metal fans in the same light again.

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About the Author: Laina Dawes is music and cultural critic, and a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University. Her writings and photography can be found in various print and online publications in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Born and raised in Ontario, she lives in New York City.

Skin formed Skunk Anansie in 1994, releasing the albums Paranoid and Sunburst, Stoosh, Post Organic Chill, Wonderlustre, and Black Traffic. Her voice appears on albums by Sevendust and Tony Iommi, and on a number of soundtracks. Skin is also a DJ. She resides in London.

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Compiler’s Note: Although the theme of the book is not adoption-specific, the author is a transracial adoptee (adopted by white parents in Canada at the age of six months) who talks about how, among other things, she felt unable to talk to her white parents about the racism she encountered during her childhood.

From the Dust Jacket: One Sunday night in Sydney, Robert Dessaix collapses in a gutter in Darlinghurst, and is helped to his hotel by a kind young man wearing a t-shirt that says FUCK YOU. What follows are weeks in hospital, with tubes and cannulae puncturing his body, as he recovers from the heart attack threatening daily to kill him.

While lying in the hospital bed, Robert chances upon Philip Larkin’s poem “Days.” What, he muses, have his days been for? What and who has he loved—and why?

This is vintage Robert Dessaix. His often surprisingly funny recollections range over topics as eclectic as intimacy, travel, spirituality, enchantment, language, and childhood, all woven through with a heightened sense of mortality.

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About the Author: Robert Dessaix’s best-known books, all widely translated, are the autobiography A Mother’s Disgrace, the novels Night Letters and Corfu, and the travel memoirs Twilight of Love and Arabesques. His most recent work is the collection of essays and talks As I Was Saying. After teaching Russian language and literature in the 1970s and ’80, and presenting the ABC’s Books and Writing programme for ten years, he became a full-time writer in 1995. He lives in Hobart.

Were you adopted? Did you have a similar experience? Do you face issues with identity? Ms. Burns learned of her own adoption when she was a teenager growing up in the Middle East, and it came as a shock. Rather than a prescribed formula for happiness and success, Ms. Burns’ story shares through example her own victory toward “celebrating self.” Where other books teach, she leads; where these books tell, she shows. Ms. Burns includes, in addition, the wisdom of many renowned psychologists, psychiatrists, President Kennedy, a scientist and individuals whose works she consulted to provide you with the crucial seven steps to recover from anger and depression to peace and fulfillment. Through the power of love you can heal and through that same love you can accept.

The spiritually provocative questions about adoption will speak to your soul and open a door to understanding and peace about your adoption experience, no matter which member of the adoption circle you may be. If you have experienced depression, troubled relationships, and life stress because of the way you have viewed adoption, this book offers a spiritual lifeline in a very simple, loving way. It opens the path of inquiry and examination of your thoughts and beliefs to find more self-acceptance, better relationships, higher spiritual consciousness, and ultimately, more inner peace by learning to accept “what is.” In this book, Janice Masters invites and illuminates healing for those who suffer emotionally because of the ways in which they, and society, have viewed adoption.

Foster-carer Melissa Hudson reveals what it feels like to be fostered in this minibook, through the eyes of one of her teenage charges.

From the Publisher: Writer Elspeth Sandys was born during the World War II, the result of a brief encounter between two people who would never meet again. The first nine months of her life were spent in the Truby King Karitane Hospital in Dunedin, New Zealand, where she was known by her birth name, Frances Hilton James. This would change with her adoption into the Somerville family. A new birth certificate was issued and Frances James became Elspeth Sandilands Somerville. Tom and Alice Somerville, Elspeth’s new parents, lived with their son John in Dunedin’s Andersons Bay. While Elspeth was happy among the ebullient and welcoming Somerville clan, she had a difficult relationship with her adoptive mother, who was frequently hospitalized with mental health problems. Elspeth’s search for her birth parents did not begin until much later in her adult life. What she discovered after an exhaustive search provided answers that were both disturbing and ultimately rewarding. Beautifully told, What Lies Beneath is a searing, amusing, and never-less-than gripping tale of a difficult life.

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About the Author: Elspeth Sandys was born in New Zealand but moved to the UK in 1969. She has published nine novels (River Lines was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 1996), two collections of short stories (Standing in Line won the Elena Garro Pen International Prize in 2003) and has written extensively for the BBC and RNZ. She has also worked in film and TV. Her stage plays have been performed in the UK, the US and NZ. Elspeth’s memoir What Lies Beneath was published in 2014. A sequel, Casting Off, followed in 2017. Her most recent novel, Obsession, was published in the same year. In 2019 A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley was published to widespread acclaim. Part biography, part family memoir, part travelogue, the book follows the life and times of Rewi Alley of China, the author’s cousin. Elspeth has held a number of literary fellowships and residencies, and in 2006 was awarded the ONZM for services to literature. She now lives in New Zealand.

From the Publisher: My childhood in Hillside, New Jersey, portrays a microcosm of life in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Fathers worked, mothers ran the household, and children were allowed to be kids. We walked to school, played outdoors afterwards, and led carefree lives, secure in the comfort of loving parents and safe neighborhoods. All this ended abruptly when family secrets were revealed, and the comfortable life I knew rapidly dissolved. With its dissolution came many losses during my early teens. Yet I survived and triumphed with the help of remaining family members, good friends, and kind strangers. This personal account of my early life is one of love, loss, and resilience. It shows that people can overcome many obstacles and reach their goals with a positive attitude, determination, and help from others.

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About the Author: Libby Atwater began telling people’s stories more than two decades ago. As a journalist, teacher, and personal historian, she has written for individuals, families, businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, magazines, and community newspapers. Tales from her life have been published in several anthologies. What Lies Within is her first memoir. Its sequel, What Took You So Long, is in progress.

From the Back Cover: We would like to believe that adoption is a win-win situation in which an otherwise “unwanted” child is altruistically matched with parents who long to raise her. We want very much to believe that anyone can give birth but because those who adopt make a choice based on a deep desire to parent, they are less likely to abuse. Stories such as Farrisi’s remind us that adoption is not always a fairytale with a happy ending.

As Farrisi states early on, adoption is a second-best choice for all parties involved. Adoptive parents would prefer to bear their own children; birth parents would prefer to be able to raise the children they bear; and all children would prefer to be biologically connected to the parents who raise them. Differences in temperament and expectations lead more often to abuse than the public is ready admit (e.g. Mommie Dearest). It is through brave personal accounts such as these that we can shatter the myths of adoption and begin to see the real-life problems with which adoption is fraught and stop promoting it to birth and adoptive parents unrealistically.

—Mirah Riben
Author of Shedding Light On The Dark Side of Adoption
Former Director-at-Large for the American Adoption Congress

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About the Author: Vida Theresa Rodriguez Farrisi was born and raised in Manhattan and received her education at Sarah Lawrence College, Mannes College of Music, and Skidmore College, through which she received her degree in music. Theresa’s first book Diaper Changes: The Complete Diapering Book and Resource Guide has been received to critical acclaim and was a 1998 Writer’s Digest National Self-Published Book Award winner.

Theresa’s first recording, Lullabies: Traditional American and International Songs has been released and she is currently working on her third book Babywise Is Not Wise.

Besides singing and writing, Theresa enjoys her avocation as a seamstress and being a “keeper at home.” She created her company so that she could enjoy the presence with her young children that a home-based business affords.

Theresa would someday like to produce an historical church hymnal, a recording of early American hymns and songs, a recording of the songs of Stephen Foster, and a modern edition of the poetry of George Herbert.

Theresa’s husband Tony designs and creates their line of hardwood blocks sets called ECOBLOCKS. Together they are parents of six homeschooled children: Francesca, Angelica, Anthony, Gloria, Gabriella and Sophia.

The Farrisi’s make their present home in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

From the Publisher: Eugene Morrow grows up belittled and abused by an alcoholic father and weak mother. He can never do anything well enough to earn either parent’s favor. Finally he quits trying, but his internal rage and frustration approach an explosion.

Fifteen-year-old Twila Herrod’s parents rear their three children in a loving, Christian home. When they move to a new church in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, they buy a house next door to the Morrows. Eugene secretly watches Twila through the windows and longs for the loving relationships she has.

One night Twila is home alone, and Eugene sees a way to prove himself—to get even for the abuse he suffered. Twila struggles but is overpowered by Eugene. Afterward, she feels too ashamed to tell her parents what happened and tries to purge the terrible experience from her mind. Then Twila realizes, to her horror, that new life is growing inside her.

What should she do? What will her parents think? Abortion seems like a way out, and her parents would never have to know. How could she provide the home and family a baby deserves? Why didn’t God prevent this?

This is a Testimonial of how God showed up unexpectedly when we needed him the most, changing our lives and hundreds more in an indescribable way. Did our lives suddenly become easier? No, but the cups began to full of Hope and our souls did become new again! This book is how God saved my sweet fiancée and at the same time restored my faith as a believer, showing up in the most unlikely of places. God has a plan for each of us no matter a believer or non-believer, new in your faith or a mature Christian—it matters not to Him. Thank you LORD so much for watching over us, even when we did not think you cared. Thank you for having our back when all seemed lost. Thank you for being our Hope in our darkest of days. Most of all, thank you for just being You!

From the Back Cover: Have you ever felt like you weren’t entitled to the happily every after that ended so many of the fairy tales that we read as children? What transpires when life happens and it leaves you bitter? Do you continue to walk around knowing how function? Go to church on Sunday, Monday through Friday go to work, Saturday I try to cram everything I didn’t get done during the week on that day. I go visit, clean up, wash clothes. I became a robot to life with one routine after another. To many I seemed as though I was happy but I was growing bitter with each and every day.

When Life Gives You Lemons is a book that deals with the bitterness that many times comes with life; those things that you store in the back of your mind that you never fully get over. Instead of dealing with it, you learn how to function. This was me. I was in church praising God, but never really enjoying the fullness of God because life was happening and I was growing bitterer with every situation. From a miscarriage to delivering a stillborn, to having hopes and dreams slashed. I started believing the lie that the enemy was saying. The lie that I wasn’t entitled to be happy in life. This book is designed to help start the process of letting go of your bitterness through the author’s life experiences contained in this book, it will motivate one to start down the road of recovery. To start waling in the life that God has for you which is one full of peace and joy.

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About the Author: LeTasha S. Robinson is a native of South Carolina where she still currently resides. She works actively with her community by volunteering in different programs. LeTasha is very familiar with knowing how to perform but not conforming. Since experiencing the freedom that God has, it is her heart’s desire to see people set free from the bondage that life can bring. Being given up for adoption early in life, she has dealt with many things. However she did not all that to deflect her educational studies. Currently she holds a Bachelors of Science from Benedict College and a Masters from Strayer University both concentrating in Marketing. Marketing is one of her passions, which she utilizes to guide others on their journey of self-improvement and self-empowerment. With this she educates people on how to be marketable by first learning to love themselves.

Abandoned by her birth family, bounced around in foster homes, eventually adopted and sexually abused by her adoptive father are just the beginning of a number of traumatic events in this remarkable true story of a girl who, in time, was able to overcome each obstacle, each setback, every struggle and traumatic event that life put in her path. Throughout the pandemonium in her life, she proves victorious. Through the multitude of struggles, she eventually makes sense of the cards she was dealt. By sharing her story she hopes to not only help herself but help others who hold a similar hand in this deck of life. For those loved ones of the many unfortunate victims, she hopes to offer a glimpse into the life of the victim. This story based on true events is a must read, heart pounding, tear-jerking memoir about terrifying abuse that took the innocence of a young girl that will keep you intrigued to the very end.

From the Publisher: The dreams of a courageous Apache girl illuminate the hidden world of an Indian orphanage in this unforgettable story. Over forty years ago, Sharon Skolnick (Okee-Chee) and her sisters were removed from their Apache parents and became wards of the state of Oklahoma. She and her nearest sister made their way together through the Oklahoma Indian child welfare system. Shuttled back and forth between foster homes and orphanages, they finally ended up at the Murrow Indian Orphanage in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Here, Skolnick tells the gripping and ultimately triumphal account of the year the sisters spent there.

Murrow was a place of wonder and terror, friendship and loneliness, where resilient children forged shifting alliances and conspired together yet yearned in solitude for a home and family to call their own. Skolnick paints an absorbing portrait of the world of an Indian orphanage, a world both bright and dark, vividly rendered through a child’s eyes but tempered by the perspective of the woman who survived the Indian child welfare system and became an Apache artist.

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About the Author: Sharon Skolnick, a member of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, is a gallery owner and artist in Chicago. Where Courage Is Like a Wild Horse is her first book.

Manny Skolnick, a freelance writer, is the coauthor of Keeper of the Delaware Dolls, also available from the University of Nebraska Press.

This is the life story of Sherry Lynne, who at age eleven, ran away from her abusive adoptive parents to fend for herself on the streets of Toronto. Things went from bad to worse as Sherry Lynne found herself caught in the webs of substance abuse and the sex trade. Throughout her life, Sherry Lynne asked the question: “Where was God?” Why had He allowed all these bad things to happen to her?

When Linda Burden was five years old, her adopted parents came home with a new baby. The baby was not born to Linda’s parents; much as they had done with Linda and her brother, the Burden parents had adopted the tiny child. This tiny child was now Linda’s little sister, and they named her Alison. They appeared to have a charmed life, but there was nothing charming about it. Linda and Alison’s parents were still mourning the deaths of their two biological children. Their father was an alcoholic, and their mother was having an affair. This difficult upbringing drew Linda and Alison together as more than just adopted sisters; they became friends—best friends—who would survive a painful childhood to become adults on very different life paths. Linda took a high road; Alison, suffering from psychological illness, found herself on a low road. Alison’s life devolved into one of alcoholism and anorexia. Linda would become her only hope for salvation. In this true life account of sibling love and devotion, Linda watches her sister’s weight drop to sixty-five pounds, and—before it’s too late—she must convince Alison that she is beautiful. Despite their differing DNA, Linda and Alison are linked by love, and it is love they need most of all.

In the way life imitates art, Gerry Walshe’s life began in a way similar to that of Steve Martin’s character Navin R. Johnson in the movie The Jerk. Born in Melbourne in 1926, Gerry Walshe got off to a bad start in life by conventional standards. Being the illegitimate son of a Roman Catholic woman, he was given away to a tribal Aboriginal woman at the age of four months to be raised by the Lieillwan clan in North Western New South Wales. At age five he was reclaimed by his natural mother. His father was killed right before his seven-year-old eyes. Being brought back into white society, he was very confused. When he was introduced to his white family he was ostracised by his blood relatives as being seen as a very black sheep. So, Gerry grew up tough—he had to. Sent to a Catholic College in Melbourne he had to settle scores with the playground bullies. This he did in three rounds. Gerry joined the RAAF at age 18. He was posted to Morotai Island to work on damaged aircraft during World War II. He dodged live ammunition on no less than three occasions. Later he went to Japan as a member of the British Occupational Forces where he rescued Japanese civilians from typhoon ravaged areas, witnessed the damage that the atomic weapons wrought on Hiroshima and performed PR duties for the RAAF in conjunction with the American forces there. After the war he returned to Melbourne only to find his life savings had been “ratted” away by his own family. While overseas, he lost his one true love in an accident. But Gerry rose above all this. Despite nearly losing his life in a motor cycle accident he managed to survive—long enough to write this account of his life—so far. Today, Gerry lives quietly near Batemans Bay in NSW.

Although many books have been written about the history of adoption, their focus varies from the legal proceedings to personal accounts of the different parties involved. There are few on the actual history, but that history is interspersed among other events. That is where author C.S. Ringer’s informational and inspirational book, Who Am I, is different. Beginning in biblical times, Ringer takes you on a journey through the history of adoption, leading up to modern times and her own adoption when she was an infant. You will learn, through her unique perspective, how adoption started and the path it has taken over the many years of its existence.

From the Publisher: The adopted child is sure to ask this question sooner or later. Some of the answers can turn out to be surprising and even scary. In this book, Diane Koven, herself the mother of two adopted children, attempts to answer the question by interviewing a number of adoptees. Diane says, “A great many families have been touched by adoption, yet it is only in recent years that people have openly discussed it. Even now, it isn’t something that one might readily include in a casual conversation or an introduction...” Diane’s research and reporting have crossed barriers, invited disclosure, and opened up a dialogue. Whether you have adopted a child or have yourself been adopted, you are a part of this dialogue.

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About the Author: Diane Koven is a Certified Financial Planner, Certified Health Specialist, and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst with Sunlife Financial in Ottawa, Ontario. She is a graduate of Carleton University (English Literature) and Algonquin College (Media Communications) and has been a freelance writer for over three decades. She is an avid Nordic walker, has participated in several Dragon Boat races, and enjoys watercolour painting and new adventures. The most rewarding experience of her life continues to be her role of mother to two exceptionally wonderful children.

From the Back Cover: I wrote about my own story from the time I was born until the present. I decided to write my book a long time ago, especially if I learned who my natural parents were. Even though I haven’t found my natural parents, I chose to write about my adventures in searching and about my adopted parents who eventually wanted nothing to do with me. That is what my book is about. The only problem that I had with my story is that there is no resolution to my search. I hired Omni Trace in Delray Beach, Florida, three or four years ago, and they can’t find the name of my natural parents, let alone the maiden name of my adopted mother and her family, even though I gave them her surname.

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About the Author: Gale Tobin Holz lives in the quiet village of Oak Harbor, Ohio, with her husband, Walter (Fritz), her son, Rod, and her four furry and cuddly kitties, Sunny, Jackson, Smokey, and Morris.

Passed around from family to family before an interstate adoption brought them to Idaho from Oregon, two young girls spend most of their lives wondering why their parents didn’t keep them. Every effort to find information about their past is shut down—by their adoptive family, the adoption agency, and the judicial system. Will they ever find answers to the questions that have haunted them for nearly 30 years?
• Why was Janet born on the side of a highway in the middle of the night?
• Who left these girls with the neighbors and didn’t come back?
• What do the girls remember from before their adoption?
• Why did each family pass them on to another family instead of giving them a permanent home?
• Is someone out there missing them?
• Is there a conspiracy to keep them from knowing the truth?
• What does a “forever family” mean anyway?
Learn the answers to these questions as you catch a glimpse of the psychological and emotional nightmare that surrounds the search for biological parents. After decades of fruitless searches for their biological parents, something miraculous happens to open up the door for a reunion to take place. With a name and contact information, would the girls have the courage to reach out to a man who gave them away almost 30 years ago? Take a ride on an emotional roller coaster with these two sisters as they defy their adoptive family’s wishes to search out their birth parents.

From the Back Cover: Abandoned as a baby, Catherine DeVrye was adopted by loving parents in Canada. When she was 21 they died of cancer within a year of each other. An only child, Catherine packed her bags for Australia, arriving jobless and nearly penniless.

This led to a lifelong journey to find her place in the world. She waited tables, taught school, worked on a mine site and went on to become a public servant. She then joined IBM, who sent her on postings to Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York. Named Australian Executive Woman of the Year, Catherine found herself dining with princes, prime ministers and Olympic athletes. She also cycled over the Andes, dived with sharks and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

Yet, still something was missing. So eventually Catherine decided to search for her biological parents. And that’s when her adventures really began...

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About the Author: Catherine DeVrye was born in Canada and lives in Sydney when she’s not traveling the world sharing her life experiences. Her previous bestselling books include Hot Lemon and Honey and Hope Happens.

From the Introduction: This book reflects over twenty years of experience with placed-out and adopted children. Although it is largely made up of the recollections of five adults who were adopted as school-age children, it also tells a series of stories about other dependent children, reviews the historical background of older-child adoptions, and discusses the factors that currently influence adoptive practices. As the reader will discover, adoptive placement does not end the torment that some placed children feel. Even when grown, they still seek the answer to "Whose child am I?"

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About the Author: John Young Powell, Ph.D., a native of North Carolina, received his undergraduate education at High Point College, his master’s degree from the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his doctoral degree from the Department of Child Development and Family Relations of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His entire professional career has been in child welfare as a clinician and administrator. Dr. Powell is Executive Director of the Thompson Children’s Home (Episcopal), in North Carolina, which includes a residential treatment center for troubled children, an adoption preparation program for school-aged children, a community group home, and family counseling services. He and his wife, Betsy, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Stephanie, live near Charlotte, North Carolina.

Patsy Faires, M.F.A., a freelance artist, is recognized for her skill in a variety of media. A native of Hickory, North Carolina, she received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Mrs. Faires, her husband Eddie and daughter Kim live near Kernersville, North Carolina.

From the Publisher: Whose Child? is an account of one adoptee’s life story written for members of the adoption community, helping professionals, or anyone touched by adoption. It spans from relinquishment through reunion to help the reader develop a better understanding of the lifelong emotional aspects of adoption and reunion.

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About the Author: Kasey Hamner grew up in the Los Angeles area and now resides in La Crescenta, CA. He has a master of science degree in counseling and is a practicing school psychologist and a licensed educational psychologist who works with special-needs children, many of whom have been abandoned in some way. Hamner was adopted in the closed-adoption system over 32 years ago and has been in reunion since 1994. He wrote this book in order to promote his own healing and to help bring healing to all those touched by adoption.

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By the Same Author: Adoption Forum: Intimate Discussions to Unite the Triad in Healing. (2002).

This is a true journey of a little girl who did not know where she belonged. She is a survivor of many types of abuse. She grew up to be a well adjusted adult only by the Grace of God. The title of this book came about by what this little girl went through. Her grandfather used to say to the children, “Who’s little girl of boy are you?” She now knows where she belongs. She belongs to God. The cover was the result of a vision this little girl had when she was going through a very rough time in her life with her son. The vision is of the little girl as an infant in Jesus’ arms and Jesus taking her hand as an adult. Jesus was letting her know that He had been with her throughout her life and that He will never leave her alone. Jesus will always be there in what ever she is going through or what she might go through later in her life. Jesus is her one and only savior from the trials and tribulations she will go through in her life’s journey. I pray that you will be blessed in reading this true life’s journey of this little girl who finally found out where she belonged.

Why Am I So Special? is the autobiography of Barry Henkin, a man whose kind heart, optimistic disposition, and encyclopedic memory for music and faces have enabled him to overcome the physical, mental, emotional, and societal obstacles that have confronted him since birth. Since 2011, Barry has been speaking to others faced with developmental challenges in the hope of motivating them to live their lives to their fullest potential. Having had the good fortune to happily work for a single employer for over three decades, Barry would also like to motivate employers and the greater community to provide more opportunities for people such as himself. The book has been written by Barry, with a little help from his friends, to enable him to deliver his message of hope and inspiration to a wider audience.

From the Dust Jacket: In 1985 Jeanette Winterson’s first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, was published. It tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents. The girl is supposed to grow up and be a missionary. Instead she falls in love with a woman. Disaster.

Written when Jeanette Winterson was only twenty-five, her novel went on to win the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, become an international bestseller and inspire an award-winning BBC television adaptation.

Oranges was semi-autobiographical. Mrs. Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over that novel and its author’s life. When Jeanette finally left her home, at sixteen, because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: “Why be happy when you could be normal?”

This book is the story of a life’s work to find happiness. It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a tyrant in place of a mother, who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a northern industrial town now changed beyond recognition, part of a community now vanished; about the Universe as a Cosmic Dustbin. It is the story of how the painful past Jeanette Winterson thought she had written over and repainted returned to haunt her later life, and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. It is also a book about other people’s stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft which supports us when we are sinking.

Funny, acute, fierce and celebratory, this is a toughminded search for belonging, for love, an identity, a home and a mother.

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About the Author: Jeanette Winterson OBE is the author of ten novels, including The Passion, Sexing the Cherry and Written on the Body, a book of short stories, The World and Other Places, a collection of essays, Art Objects, as well as many other works, including children’s books, screenplays and journalism. Her writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E.M. Forster Award and the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival.

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By the Same Author: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985, Pandora Press); Sexing the Cherry (1989, Bloomsbury); and The Gap of Time (2015, Hogarth).