From the Dust Jacket: Brian Moore, or “Pitbull” as he came to be known during nearly a decade at the heart of the England rugby team’s pack, established himself as one of the game’s original hard men at a time when rugby was still an amateur sport. Since his retirement, he has earned a reputation as an equally uncompromising commentator, never afraid to tell it as he sees it and lash out at the money men and professionals that have made rugby into such a different beast.

Yet, for all his bullishness on and off the pitch, there also appears a more unconventional, complicated side to the man. A solicitor by trade, Moore’s love of fine wine, career experience as a manicurist and preference for reading Shakespeare in the dressing room before games, mark him out as anything but the stereotypical rugby player and in Beware of the Dog Moore lays open with astounding frankness the shocking events, both personal and professional, that have gone towards shaping him over the years.

Presenting an unparalleled insight into the mind of one of British rugby’s greatest players and characters, Beware of the Dog is a uniquely engaging and upfront sporting memoir.

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About the Author: Brian Moore won 64 caps for the England rugby team between 1987 and 1995. He played in three Rugby World Cups and won the Grand Slam in 1991, 1992 and 1995. He went on two British ions tours. Originally a qualified solicitor, he writes for the Sun and the Telegraph newspapers and is a co-commentator for international rugby matches alongside Eddie Butler on BBC TV.

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By the Same Author: Brian Moore: The Autobiography (with Stephen Jones; 1995, Partridge Press), among others.

From the Publisher: Janet Shaw was adopted as a baby. At thirteen months, she was diagnosed as having an inherited condition—a malignant cancer called retinoblastoma. While she was still a baby, she had one eye removed and had radiotherapy to her other eye. There was very little expectation that she would survive or ever lead a normal life. But the young girl never regarded herself as a blind person. She had partial sight and supportive parents so when the authorities insisted she go to Blind School (the Red Door of the title), she was plunged into despair. Against all the odds, Janet has lead a full and active life, even traveling to Europe on her own. But at the back of her mind was the knowledge that she had been handed a genetic time-bomb from her biological parents. She needed to know who they were so, in her early twenties, she began to search for her birth parents. Rejected by her mother, she has since met and maintained contact with her father—a member of a prominent political and media family. In a final amazing twist, Janet, now permanently blind and in her mid-thirties, has become a champion disabled cyclist, winning four medals at the 2002 World Disabled Cycling Championship and she is soon to compete in the Athens 2004 Paralympics where she is expected to take gold. World Disabled Cycling Championship and she is soon to compete in the Athens 2004 Paralympics where she is expected to take gold.

From the Publisher: Jazz musician Steve Tucker has always known he was adopted and has spent nearly fifty years tormented by thoughts of who he is, where he came from and whom he looks like. Like many adoptees, he embarks on a journey of discovery when he goes looking for his biological parents. His search does not lead him to the other side of the world but, instead, to a street just around the corner from where he used to live. When he eventually finds his blood mother, he has to go on a journey to an altogether unfamiliar place, far away, before he can talk to her.

Instead of the happy family image he’d had in his mind, Steve finds the tragic story of his mother’s life. A glamorous, talented and artistic model has her life taken away from her as a young woman because of a pregnancy out of wedlock. She is rejected by her family, thrown out of her home and ends up alone in a mother-and-baby home in London. Her child is taken from her, and she is left suffering from depression, locked in a mental asylum.

Gradually, Steve comes to terms with his mother’s life and seeks solace in the knowledge that he has inherited a number of traits from his biological family: an eccentric, flamboyant, extravagant and addictive personality from his mother and, from his father’s side, he finds he has music in his genes as his uncle had played with some of the most famous jazz musicians in the world, including Louis Armstrong.

Billie’s Kid is a powerful and emotional story of the soul-searching of an adoptee. It explains the agony and the periods of confusion and self-destruction Steve goes through on his journey. His discovery leaves him happy and contented on what he describes as his peaceful island. Throughout his story, Steve compares adoption in the 1960s with today’s adoption process in a very personal and sometimes controversial way.

The personal experience of being adopted by naval officer/writer.

This book was born out of the author’s doctoral research based on her investigation of the inner world of adopted Korean children. This groundbreaking study reveals the inner thoughts and feelings of transracially adopted children by Caucasian families in the U.S. In the author’s words: “My experiences with them furnished me with many insights. I learned about the special meaning of physical differences and why being teased or ridiculed becomes a crisis. I came to understand behaviors such as the tendency to overeat, to hoard food, to refuse to speak Korean, to shun other Koreans, and to be extremely conforming. I also found the significance of the tension generated by the words ‘Korea’ and ‘Korean.’ ” Although written in the mid-1980s, there is much here still relevant to our understanding of how adoption affects the transracial/transcultural adoptee. Recommended for those who like somewhat more academically oriented research.

I had always wondered about finding my birth mother, but until I was 35 years old, I had never done anything about it. Finally, I decided to take the plunge. I knew it would be difficult, but little did I know just how difficult it was going to be. First of all, I love my parents. They raised me and I appreciate all of the many opportunities in my life that would not otherwise have been available without their loving care. So it was only natural that I did not want to hurt them in any way. But it is my life to live, I am grown up now, and in my heart I think I am entitled to at least know about my birth mother if I am able to find her. I know. She may not want to see me. She may not have told anyone, particularly her present family about me. It has been so long. She may not want me in her life in any way. She probably has tried her best to forget that I ever happened. But whatever the truth is, I WANT TO KNOW. This book is about my search, and my discovery of my birth mother. I am not going to tell you whether it turned out good or bad. You will have to read the book to find out. But what I can tell you is since I had so much trouble with the search, I have given you an outline on how you can do your own search and perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls that I had to go through. — E.B. Schumacher

What happens when birth parents and the children that they’ve placed for adoption meet? The authors of Birthbond conducted intensive interviews with 30 birth mothers who had successfully searched or been found. In addition, they talked with adoptees, members of the birth family, adoptive parents, adoption professionals and others involved with adoption in order to discover the impact of reunions on the lives of all who may be affected by adoption reunions.

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About the Author: Judith S. Gediman, a research professional with degrees from Smith College and Harvard University, is currently principal and co-owner of a marketing research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut.

Linda P. Brown, an early childhood educator, is a birthmother whose post-reunion is currently in its fourth year. She is legislative director of the American Adoption Congress.

Birthed Once, Twice Born is a insightful look into the pains that religious “church folk” tend to overlook in children. My goal is to touch lives of others by exposing the demons that I dealt with growing up into a more spiritual person. Many people suffer on a daily basis believing that they are strong enough to overcome childhood traumas by merely ignoring them. However what most people don’t acknowledge is that the struggles that we all face from birth until death is purposed by God to mold us into that which He has called us to do and be. Instead of giving up, we have to find the strength to move past the tears so that we can grow up and indulge in all that God promised us.

From the Back Cover: What happens when an adoptee decides to locate a birthparent or a birthparent wants to find a child given up long ago? How does one search for people whose names one does not know? And what happens during a reunion? In 1983, Jean A. S. Strauss was faced with these questions when she began her search for her birthmother, and in this inspiring new handbook, she shares her experience. Strauss will help you throughout this significant time. Brimming with important reference sources and dozens of true-life stories, this valuable resource will guide you in:

• Making the difficult decision to search

• Navigating through the emotional turbulence of a reunion

• Dealing with the impact of the search on the adoptive parents

Compassionate and insightful, Birthright is for anyone seeking to connect with someone long lost.

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About the Author: Jean Strauss is the wife of a college president and the author of Birthright (Penguin) and lives in Claremont, California.

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By the Same Author: The Great Adoptee Search Book (1990, Castle Rock Publishing) and Beneath a Tall Tree: A Story About Us (2001, Arete Publishing Co.).

In Bitterroot Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her “real” parents. He replied that they had died in a car accident not long after she was born—except they hadn’t, as Harness would learn in a conversation with a social worker a few years later.
Harness’s search for answers revolved around her need to ascertain why she was the target of racist remarks and why she seemed always to be on the outside looking in. New questions followed her through college and into her twenties when she started her own family. Meeting her biological family in her early thirties generated even more questions. In her forties Harness decided to get serious about finding answers when, conducting oral histories, she talked with other transracial adoptees. In her fifties she realized that the concept of “home” she had attributed to the reservation existed only in her imagination.
Making sense of her family, the American Indian history of assimilation, and the very real—but culturally constructed—concept of race helped Harness answer the often puzzling questions of stereotypes, a sense of non-belonging, the meaning of family, and the importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance. In the process Bitterroot also provides a deep and rich context in which to experience life.

From the Publisher: I wrote this story in 1991 about two years after I met my German birth mother in Germany in 1989. I was 41 at the time when I wrote this. I was 39 when I met her. I never thought it was possible. I believed in the impossible though. I had a lot of deep emotions. I hope that the reader is able to capture that moment in time with me. I personally believe that people have the right to know about their birth circumstances if they so choose. I had no say in the matter at the time of my adoption. No say on where I would go or who I would be with.

All I know is it the best thing I could have ever done ... finding my birth mother. It was the scariest emotional risk I have ever taken in my life. Like anything else in life, no risk—no reward. I personally believe that each and every adoptee wants to know where they came from even if they adamantly deny it. It is such a basic human right. Who wouldn’t want to know? That is my personal opinion. So be it. I certainly do not apologize for it. I am proud of it. I had to know. It helped me to heal my life on a deep level. I continue to do that even into my 60’s ... heal my life at a very deep level. My goal now is to share my story with others through my experience.

I wrote this for myself and my own healing process at the time. I now feel comfortable in sharing this information with others who may be considering a search. Whatever one decides, it is their decision and no one else’s. I was an international adoption. I was yanked from my genetic roots. I was forced into another culture. I guess that is where they get the saying—culture shock.

I hope that this journal of my moment in time will assist you in your journey—whether you are an adoptee; an adoptive parent; a birth mother; a birth father; or anyone else in the adoption masquerade. I say, let the truth be known. The truth frees all parties involved.

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About the Author: Micheline Birger is a freelance writer, lecturer, nurse, novelist.

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By the Same Author: Spiritually Healing the Adoption Masquerade (2011).

From the Publisher: It is only three months following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the nation is burning. Black and White America are locked in the tense grip of massive change. Into this inferno steps an unsuspecting young White couple. Neither significantly knew even a single African American person while growing up. Now, a child will change all of that forever. In this fateful moment, a Black baby becomes perhaps the first in the history of New Mexico to be adopted by a White family. Here is a brazenly honest glimpse into the mind and heart of that child, a true story for the ages.

Jaiya John has opened the floodgates on his own childhood. Black Baby White Hands, a waterfall of jazz splashing over the rocks of pain, love and the honoring of family. Magically, this book finds a way to sing as it cries, and to exude compassion even as it dispels well-entrenched myths. This classic is sure to find itself well worn, stained by tears, and brushed by laughter in the lap of parents, adolescents, educators, students and professionals. Here comes the rain and the sunshine, all at once.

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About the Author: Jaiya John is the founder and Executive Director of Soul Water Rising, an educational mission devoted to improving human relations, eradicating prejudice, and fostering spiritual growth. For over a decade he has traveled the nation as a professional speaker, poet, author and youth mentor. Jaiya’s passionate, poetic presentations combine spiritual and social science insights. This work is truly his mission, ministry and life. He has appeared on CNN, B.E.T., Fox Television and National Public Radio. Jaiya also spent four years as a professor of social psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Jaiya was born in Albuquerque, NM. Immediately placed in foster care and eventually adopted, Jaiya lived as an African American in a predominately Caucasian American environment. This childhood branded in him a burning passion for giving his life to improve the way human beings relate to each other. Jaiya studied psychology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, and earned his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in social psychology. He lived and studied during 1988 in the nation of Nepal, where his research on Tibetan medicine instilled within him an appreciation for holistic concepts of physical, emotional and spiritual health. Being of not only African but Seminole, Blackfoot and Cherokee descent; and having grown up in the midst of the Southwest’s American Indian and Latino communities, Jaiya has an appreciation for the spiritual and communal passions that spring from these worlds. This spirit he ingrains in his own beliefs and messages about our social world. Jaiya believes that in every moment of life, each of us is a teacher and a student. He is faithful to his purpose: fostering relations among humankind living in a world where we have learned to let the differences in our divine nature divide us.

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By the Same Author: Beautiful (2008), Legendary (2008) and Reflection Pond (2007).

From the Back Cover: “I grew up feeling like a cuckoo in somebody else’s nest. Unfortunately, my family didn’t consider it a problem. Well, it wasn’t, for them.”

Born in 1953 of Anglo-Jewish/Nigerian parents, Pauline Black was adopted by a white, working class family in Romford in the fifties.

Never quite at home there, she escaped her small town background, and discovered a different way of life, making music, exploring politics and eventually changing her name to own her heritage.

Lead singer for platinum-selling band The Selecter, Black was the Queen of British Ska. She toured with The Specials, Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and all the top bands of that generation when they were at the top of the charts ... and on their worst behaviour.

From childhood to fame, covering singing, acting and broadcasting, and her recent search for her birth parents, Black By Design is a funny and enlightening story of music and roots.

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About the Author: Born in Romford, Pauline Black is a singer and actress who gained fame as the lead singer of The Selecter. After the band split in 1982, Black developed an acting career in television and theatre. She won the 1991 Time Out Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in the play All or Nothing at All.

The Selecter reformed in late 2010 and recorded a new album, Made In Britain, released in 2011. Pauline Black has added a new final chapter to cover The Selecter’s hugely successful 2011 tour.

Half the U.S. population (140 million Americans) have an adoption in their immediate family. There is an estimated seven million, or one-third of the Canadian population, involved in the triad of adoption. The thread of this book is adoption through which the fascinating twists of Clarke’s life are woven: divorce, “dropping out,” living in the wilderness, overcoming cancer, estrangement of her children, and finding a soul mate. Black Market Baby chronicles the life journey and search for birth parents, evolving into an epic tale of illegitimate babies sold illegally through adoption rings operating in Montreal, Quebec, and the northeast United States during the ’30s, ’40s and early ’50s. This intriguing account is told against a backdrop of historical events from 1940 to the present day.

From the Dust Jacket: The house on Mary Street was home to Jennifer; her older brother B.J.; their hardworking father, who smelled like aftershave and read her Snow White; and their mother, who called her little daughter Sunshine and embraced Jackie Kennedy’s sense of style. Through a child’s eyes, the skies of Carson City were forever blue, and life was perfect—a world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother’s pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with hairspray, powder, and a kiss on the cheek. ... But soon, everything Jennifer has come to love and rely on begins to crumble, sending her on a roller coaster of loss and loneliness. In a world unhinged by tragedy, where beautiful mothers die and families are warped by more than they can bear, a young girl must transcend a landscape of pain and mistreatment to discover her richest resource: her own unshakable will to survive..

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About the Author: Jennifer Lauck has won two Society of Professional Journalists awards for her work in television news; she also founded a public-relations company that represents nonfiction authors. She lives with her husband and son in Portland, Oregon, where she is a full-time writer at work on the sequel to Blackbird.

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By the Same Author: Still Waters (2001); Show Me the Way: A Memoir in Stories (2004, Atria); and Found: A Memoir (2011, Seal Press), among others.

From the Back Cover: Where do I belong? Barbara Gowan sought to answer this question as she searched for the real meaning of family. The product of an interracial relationship in the 1960s, she lived in foster care before her adoption by loving—and complex—parents. In this candid account, she faces her long-standing inner conflicts with race, religion, and identity as she searches for her birth parents and her life’s purpose.

Gowan’s emotional and inspirational story deals with overcoming abuse, loss, co-dependency, and rejection. She demonstrates how important the multifaceted concepts of faith, family, and love are in all human relationships, and how they form our sense of self. She shares not only her personal insights and revelations but also concrete strategies from other adoptees and respected professionals.

The result is a compelling narrative that will educate and support members of the adoption and multicultural community. Gowan’s deeply personal Christian testimonial provides an honest perspective on these often-challenging conflicts.

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About the Author: Barbara Ann Gowan, RN, BSN, is a reunited adoptee who participates in adoption panels and forums. She is a school and camp nurse and a college nursing instructor. Gowan has written articles for the Adoption Weekly e-magazine. She lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, with her four children.

The story is about Louise Meek and her spiritual journey from abuse, foster care, adoption, homelessness to survival and a renewed sense of family.

From the Publisher: In clear vivid prose, Adam Fifield recaptures the snowy night when he, at the age of eleven, along with his mother, father, and younger brother, waited to welcome fifteen-year-old Soeuth into the family. The boy shuffled in, short and scrawny, a baseball cap shading his downcast eyes. He spoke not a word, yet a silent terror hovered around him.

The author describes the events of the months that followed: Soeuth’s wariness and detachment; his fear of being seized in the night by his parents’ ghosts; Adam’s discovery of his new brother’s amazing physical skills, like catching fish with his bare hands; and Soeuth’s eventual and painful emergence from years of darkness. As Soeuth gradually adjusts to rural middle-class America, a world fantastically foreign from the horrors of his homeland, a bond is formed with his new brothers that would permanently affect them all.

In his senior year of high school, Soeuth leaves home, lured by an anesthetic world of drugs and alcohol. Over the next few years, the brothers drift apart, distracted by college, jobs, girlfriends. Then Soeuth finds out that the members of his Cambodian family—whom, for fourteen years, he has presumed to be dead—are alive. The discovery is the beginning of a new journey—one that reunites Soeuth with his long-lost brothers, sisters, and parents ... and with his American brother Adam.

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About the Author: Adam Fifield is a native of Vermont and a graduate of Bates College and Columbia University. He is a regular contributor to the Village Voice and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Where was my brother, the one born seven years before me but kept by my birth parents? Was it really possible that, after the lifetime I’d spent wondering about him, he was the guy a friend had just seen on the subway—the one who supposedly looked like my older twin? Finding my brother would soon feel like a naïve goal. His secretive and frightened parents had far more to hide than I could have imagined, and they had worked hard to maintain the elaborate façade of an ordinary family. Breaching their defenses would trigger events that quickly took control of my life. Blind in One Eye is the true story of an adoptee finding, and being absorbed into, a shockingly troubled birth family—a story about abruptly leaving behind life as an only child. But it’s also the story of someone with focused and demanding expectations who learns to see other possibilities, to see that the answers he actually gets in life might be more important than the ones he thought he wanted. The most remarkable discoveries seem to come while looking for something else—as long as you’re open to the possibilities.

In this poignant book, the writer and investigative journalist Katharine Quarmby describes the 20-year search for her Iranian birth father and her own adoption history. She links this narrative to the wider story that she uncovered during her search—of the many missing Iranian military fathers, who disappeared after the Iranian Revolution, but who are still sought by so many Iranian love-children in Britain today. Her narrative is a meditation on the importance of both birth and adoptive families—and a challenge to those who would set aside the importance of race as a factor in adoption. She describes what it feels like to search and discover your roots, in a moving story that takes her to Iran undercover, on a secret visit—a visit that changes her forever. The love of the parents who raised her gave her the courage to find her birth father. This is her tribute to both her families.

From the Dust Jacket: Scott sat there watching himself on TV, listening to reporters talking about his missing wife, dissecting the case, scrambling for new developments ... and he seemed more interested in his new facial hair than in the search for his wife.

Then he turned back to the TV and began to shake his head.

“They’re looking in the wrong places,” he said.

What happens if, after being given up for adoption in childhood, you reestablish contact with your biological family—only to discover that your newfound brother is a killer?

Anne Bird, the sister of Scott Peterson, knows firsthand.

Soon after her birth in 1965, Anne was given up for adoption by her mother, Jackie Latham. Welcomed into the well-adjusted Grady family, she lived a happy life. Then, in the late 1990s, she came back into contact with her mother, now Jackie Peterson, and her family—including Jackie’s son Scott Peterson and his wife, Laci. Anne was welcomed into the family, and over the next several years she grew close to Scott and especially Laci. Together they shared holidays, family reunions, and even a trip to Disneyland. Anne and Laci became pregnant at roughly the same time, and the two became confidantes.

Then, on Christmas Eve 2002, Laci Peterson went missing—and the happy façade of the Peterson family slowly began to crumble. Anne rushed to the family’s aid, helping in the search for Laci, even allowing Scott to stay in her home while police tried to find his wife. Yet Scott’s behavior grew increasingly bizarre during the search, and Anne grew suspicious that her brother knew more than he was telling. Finally she began keeping a list of his disturbing behavior. And by the time Laci’s body—and that of her unborn son, Conner—were found, Anne was becoming convinced: Her brother Scott Peterson had murdered his wife and unborn child in cold blood.

Filled with news-making revelations and intimate glimpses of Scott and Laci, the Peterson family, and the investigation that followed the murder, Blood Brother is a provocative account of how long-dormant family ties dragged one woman into one of the most notorious crimes of our time.

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About the Author: The mother of two sons, Anne Bird lives outside of San Francisco, California.

From the Publisher: On 8 August 1985 the press reported the killing of June and Nevill Bamber, a middle-age farming couple, and their twin grandsons by their adopted daughter Sheila, who had apparently destroyed her family in an act of schizophrenic madness and shortly afterwards committed suicide. One year later the only survivor, the Bambers adopted son and heir, Jeremy, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should remain in prison for at least 25 years. Leave to appeal was refused and Jeremy Bamber became a star turn in the demonology of the tabloid press. Seven years into his time, Bamber remains a tireless proselytiser for his innocence and insists that the killer was his sister Sheila, who had a long history of mental illness. Now the Justice For All organisation has taken up his cause. For two years Roger Wilkes has been researching this complex and disturbing case. He solved (with criminologist Jonathan Goodman) the longtime puzzle of the 1930s Liverpool cause celebre, the Wallace case, with his book Wallace: The Final Verdict, naming the killer more than fifty years after the events took place.

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About the Author: Roger Wilkes is a journalist. Born in North Wales in 1948, he was educated in Shropshire and joined the BBC in 1972. He has worked in television and radio in Liverpool, London, Bristol and, now, as a freelance in Manchester. This is his third book.

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Compiler’s Note: See also, The Murders at White House Farm by Carol Ann Lee (2015, Sidgwick & Jackson).

Blood Strangers is a captivating, multi-generational story of an alternative family. In her memoir, Katherine A. Briccetti writes about three generations of missing fathers: her father’s closed adoption in the 1930s, her own adoption by her stepfather in the 1960s, and finally, the second-parent adoption of her sons by her partner in the 1990s. Fascinated from an early age by the holes in her family tree, Briccetti takes it upon herself to search for her father’s birth parents. As her search begins to reveal more tantalizing clues about the family she never knew, she is forced to confront her own tenuous relationship with her two fathers—the father who gave her up as a little girl and the stepfather she struggles to connect with in her adult years. But when she forms her own family with Pam, her longtime partner, Briccetti learns that families can be made under many different circumstances.

Richard W. Connelly, Sr., was born illegitimate, abandoned at a strict, regimented Catholic orphanage and adopted out at age six, primarily to serve as a companion for the family’s older son. Richard rose from a lonely, intimidating childhood to come forward with a passionate desire to find the mother and family he longed for as a child, but never knew. In his autobiography, Bloodline Detective, Connelly describes the genealogical search that led to reveal, at last, the shocking mystery of his roots.

This annual directory is one of the more comprehensive collections of names and addresses of groups and individuals who offer assistance and/or support to the searching adoptee or birth parent. [Available from the publisher: C Curry Wolf, P.O. Box 230643, Encinitas, CA 92023-0643.]

From the Dust Jacket: Blue-Eyed Son is Nicky Campbell’s startling, candid and extraordinary story of his search to find his natural parents—and to discover exactly where he came from.

Raised in a comfortable middle-class home, his Scottish Protestant family cared for him and nurtured him as their own, while remaining open about the fact he’d been adopted. His father—an ex-army man—and his psychiatric social worker mother helped him to a good school, a good university and then on to a successful career in the media. Nicky rarely thought of his birth parents, until a combination of an imploding marriage and a chance meeting with a private detective led him to track his mother down.

Nick Campbell brilliantly describes their reunion and tentative steps towards a relationship, evoking all the complex and deep-seated emotions that being reunited elicited in each of them. But as they talked it became clear that there was more to Nicky’s background than he’d expected. He learned he had a sister, Esther, who, like him, had been given up for adoption in Edinburgh and with whom he would forge a close bond.

Of his natural father, his mother revealed few details, save that he had been a young Irish Catholic policeman. It was not until several years had passed that Nick felt ready to trace him, too. When he did so, he found a committed Republican whose own father had served in the IRA at the time of Michael Collins. This clash of cultures and blurring of identity forced Nicky to re-examine his life, to look again at why he acted the way that he did. Always in the back of his mind the question: Am I really like him?

In this emotionally gripping and refreshingly honest memoir, Nicky Campbell describes the many sides of a family’s dark history and how it feels to find out where you come from. Touchingly personal, yet universal in its appeal, Nicky Campbell’s story will make you think again about what “family” means.

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About the Author: After graduating from Aberdeen University in history, Nicky Campbell’s first job in radio was with Scotland’s Northsound Radio. Since then he has worked at London’s Capital Radio, Radio I and since 1997 has presented on Radio Five Live. His radio work has garnered six Sony Awards and in 1999 he was voted Variety Club of Great Britain Radio Personality of the Year. As a TV presenter he has worked on Wheel of Fortune, Central Weekend Live, Newsnight, Top of the Pops, Late Night London and Panorama and he currently fronts BBC1’s Watchdog. He is married with four daughters and lives in London.

Virtually every family in America experiences a critical need for reconciliation at one time or another. Bone of My Bone: Journey to Reconciliation does not offer a magical formula for harmony. Rather, it is the tender, moving story of one family—a tribute to what can happen when God’s awesome grace goes to work in broken lives.

Motherhood is defined by what happens after the baby is born. And motherhood never ends, even after that final breath is taken, living on in the memories and legacies left behind. In his book, you’ll find many stories that define motherhood from a wide variety of viewpoints, as told by moms and their children, throughout this country. These stories will make you laugh and cry, some poignant, others a self-reflective journey of growth and discovery. These are brave stories told with strong voices, some with their faith held firmly as their shield; while others bare their souls, some, still raw to the touch. It is amazing, to me, that the words written, carry the richness of an experience that not one writer regrets. Even those moments of pain appear to serve the holder, to carry forward the lessons of life, of love and of hope. We are proud to present these new authors to you. Revel in their life tales and in your own. Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “Why Can’t I Have a Baby” by Wendy Bernards (A couple’s journey through infertility and the heartbreak of a broken adoption); and “I Know Your Name is Carol” by Maureen Karamales (A letter of love written by an adopted child, now grown, to her birth mother).

From the Publisher: Suffused with longing, this rueful, passionate memoir about an adopted woman’s search for her birth parents explores themes of race and family.

Catherine McKinley was one of only a few thousand African American and bi-racial children adopted by white couples in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Raised in a small, white New England town, she had a persistent longing for the more diverse community that would better understand and encompass her. In an era shaped by the rhetoric of Black Power and Black Pride, McKinley’s coming of age entailed her own detailed investigation into her birth history, a search complicated by the terms of a closed adoption that denied her all knowledge of the circumstances of her birth.

The Book of Sarahs traces McKinley’s own time of revelations: after a five-year period marked by dead ends and disappointments, she finds her birth mother and a half-sister named Sarah, the name that was originally given to her. When she locates her birth father and meets several of his eleven other children she begins to see the whole mosaic of her parentage—African American, WASP, Jewish, Native American—and then is confronted with a final revelation that threatens to destabilize all she has uncovered.

At the center of the narrative is McKinley’s angry passion for her two mothers and her quest for self-acceptance in a world in which she seems to herself to be always outside the bounds of social legitimacy. In telling of her struggles both to fit into and to defy social conventions, McKinley challenges us to rethink our own preconceptions about race, identity, kinship, loyalty, and love.

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About the Author: Catherine E. McKinley is co-editor of Afrekete. She lives in New York City.

What do you get when an aging Old West lawman of the 19th century and a gentile Southern lady of the 20th century have a love child that is put up for adoption and raised by a high spirited couple from East Texas via the Oklahoma Indian Territory? The author, Jerry K. Cline. Dr. Jerry Cline is a professional mathematician. He obtained a B.A. and M.S. degrees in mathematics from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and earned a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Purdue University in 1967. After 29 years with the McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now The Boeing Company) in St. Louis, MO, he retired in 1996 as head of the Operations Analysis Department in the Engineering Division. During his career at McDonnell Douglas, Dr. Cline worked on numerous missile and space programs, including the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, Harpoon Anti-ship Missile, The Galileo Mission to Jupiter, and the Viking Mission to Mars. As part of a sub-contract with Rockwell International (also now The Boeing Company), Jerry had the technical responsibility for the dynamic analysis of the Shuttle Orbiter/External Tank separation during the ascent trajectory. Dr. Cline held an appointment as a member of the adjunct mathematics faculty at Washington University in St. Louis from 1967 to 2004. Over those 37 years, he taught various evening courses including Calculus, Advanced Calculus, Ordinary Differential Equations, Complex Variables and Partial Differential Equations. In retirement, Jerry continues to live in St. Louis with Phyllis, his wife of 22 years. He has two successful sons, Jeff and Steve, two talented daughters-in-law, and three granddaughters. He is blessed with many friends across the country. His recreational passions are bridge and golf. Jerry and Phyllis spend part of each winter in South Carolina among some of Phyllis’s friends and relatives. His life is good.