Mark Witas always assumed that life was a series of random chances. An accident. The one Friday night his phone rang. It was the mother he’d never known. Mark’s mother gave him up for adoption at birth—with the stipulation that he was not to be given to a Seventh-day Adventist family. Now, 29 years later, she found him—only to discover that he was an Adventist pastor. He tells what happened between his adoption and his call to the ministry. His lighthearted adventure in faith will inspire you with the assurance that you have been chosen to serve a special purpose in God’s great plan. With special meaning for parents with children who have left the church, Witas’ story is a message of hope for all who wonder about God’s leading in their lives.

A child was brought to life, fruit of the love of a man and a woman, new life—invaluable and priceless happiness! Yet, instead of flowers, balloons, smiles and endless blessings the child is being transferred to an orphanage, and as one of many laid onto a cold metal bed, in a room filled with abandoned babies, left upon the doorstep of a vague present and uncertain future. Small, detached, weak and fragile ... and yet, a fighter, that against all odds survives, and sent to a foster home a year later, which eventually adopts, raise and carry her to her matrimony. This spectacular and breathtaking story is about Providence. showing how a child’s stubbornness turns death into life, and how eternal love of adopting parents—that give their heart and soul to accomplish they most sublime dream—lets the child they received be raised as a diamond within a glass menagerie. And the biological mother? What became of her destiny? Did she marry, or gave birth to any other children? Will she ever see her daughter again? Yet more surprises will inevitably emerge.

An explosive expose that follows the dollar to document how America’s foster care and adoption industry fuels the prison industry and vice-versa ... supported by unscripted narratives of 12 prisoners in 8 U.S. prisons—petty thieves, drug addicts, murderers, gang members, a child molester—all of whom share their stories and feelings for the first time in their lives. Adoptee rapist-killer Jeremy Strohmeyer and 24 adopted kids who killed their adoptive parents, as well as 30 serial killers, are linked by their “adopted child syndrome” behaviors. Discover what makes adoptee and birth-parent crimes unique and ALTERNATIVES to present systems.

“The people discussed in Born Losers were not born to lose, but their life histories reflect the powerful influence of the American way of adoption, foster care and prisons ... and those who make it a commodifying, destructive experience.”

—Jean Paton, MA, MSW, “Mother” of The Open Records Movement in the U.S. since 1953

In Born to Be Different, the author gradually comes to terms with knowing that she has healing ability. Initially very reluctant to use this ability, she gradually comes to terms with it and accepts that this is part of her future and so she decides to make the best of it. On her journey she wanders down different paths exploring many other alternative therapies on the way and an insight is given into some of those. Now, some forty years on, Betty admits that she wouldn’t change one second of her life!

From the Dust Jacket: Born in the twenties to nomadic, bohemian parents, Paula Fox is left at birth in a Manhattan orphanage. Rescued at the last moment, she is taken into the care of a poor but cultivated Congregational minister in upstate New York. But her parents soon resurface. Her handsome father is a hard-drinking raconteur and screenwriter (among his credits is The Last Train to Madrid, called by Graham Greene "the worst movie I ever saw") who is, for young Paula, “part ally, part betrayer.” Her mother, a frightening, infrequent presence, is given to icy bursts of temper that punctuate a deep indifference. How, Fox wonders, is this woman “enough of an organic being to have carried me in her belly?”

Never sharing more than a few scattered moments with their daughter, Fox’s parents shuttle her from one exotic place to another. In New York City she lives with her passive Spanish grandmother. In Cuba she wanders about freely on a sugarcane plantation owned by a wealthy distant relative. In California she finds herself cast away on the dismal margins of Hollywood. Throughout, famous actors and literary celebrities glitteringly appear and then fade away—John Wayne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Maxwell Perkins, Orson Welles, James Cagney, and Stella Adler, to name a few. The thread binding Fox’s wanderings is the “borrowed finery” of the title—a few pieces of clothing, almost always lent by kindhearted strangers, that offer Fox a rare glimpse of permanency.

Vivid, poetic, written with the same inimitable purity of her novels Desperate Characters and Poor George, Borrowed Finery is a memoir as gripping as it is original—an unforgettable book that will swell the devoted company of Paula Fox’s admirers.

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About the Author: Paula Fox is the author of five novels, including Poor George, Desperate Characters, The Western Coast, The Widow’s Children, A Servant’s Tale, and The God of Nightmares. She is also a Newbery Award-winning children’s book author. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From the Back Cover: This powerful and unusual story contrasts The Bicknells, a wealthy and influential family in Rosedale, Toronto, Ontario, into which I was born out of wedlock, with a farm couple from near Brockville, Ontario who adopted me in 1935. At the age of sixteen I began to feel unsettled and lost. Eighteen years later I finally acted on that feeling and began the search for my lost parents.

Using documents I found in a box in the closet of my adoptive mother after her death, I have retrieved the moment when a sleek limousine emerged from the dust of a gravel road delivering me to my new home.

The book follows that limousine back as I searched for my birth mother, taking me into mystery, intrigue and cover-up by the legal system but bringing me finally to a supper dance in the Crystal Ballroom of the historic King Edward Hotel in Toronto, where by chance, my birth parents were reunited.

The memoir is a story of loss and recovery but it is also a story of love, strength and redemption.

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About the Author: Educator, family historian, photographer and mother, Margaret Singleton has written several books including The History and Genealogy of the Bicknell Family in Canada. Her other insterests include gardening, skiing, hiking and music. Margaret Singleton lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

From the Dust Jacket: Joseph Jacoby, who worked in the early days of live TV and went on to become a pioneering filmmaker, has until now never revealed that most of his early years were spent as a ward of the state. Jacoby survived a childhood shadowed by his mother’s unpredictable and dangerous behavior, which forced friends to commit her. Jacoby then grew up in seven foster homes in Brooklyn, and two institutions. Yet, propelled by the power of his dreams, Jacoby went on to realize his passion for the moving image and make his first theatrical feature at the age of twenty-seven. This is the moving story of what a person can achieve, without regard to so-called reason, facts, or the odds. Like The Tender Bar, this is a book that will be cherished by everyone concerned about neglected children, and by readers searching for an inspirational true story.

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About the Author: Joseph Jacoby, screenwriter, producer, director, and NYU Film School classmate of Martin Scorsese, began his career as a writer and creator of television game shows and as a puppeteer. His first theatrical feature, Shame, Shame ... Everybody Knows Her Name, was made a permanent part of the Museum of Modern Art’s film archives. He next directed, wrote, and produced his first major motion picture, a Joseph E. Levine release, Hurry Up, Or I’ll Be 30, with Danny DeVito in his first feature film role. Jacoby’s next film, The Great Bank Hoax, starred Richard Basehart, Ned Beatty, Burgess Meredith, Michael Murphy, Charlene Dallas, and Paul Sand, and was honored at the Deauville Film Festival. His picture, Davy Jones’ Locker, starring the Bil Baird Marionettes, aired on PBS stations. MoMA has mounted a March 2006 retrospective of Jacoby’s films. He lives in New York.

In the dead of winter of 1968 a newborn baby boy lay alone in a crib in an English Orphanage waiting for fate to decide what was to become of him. Who could have imagined that 12 months later he would be learning to walk through the bright red dirt of one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth; the Australian Outback. But this was just the beginning of his magical, gut wrenching and joyous journey to find himself and his place in the world.

From the Back Cover: Bravo Your Life is a collection of creative nonfiction vignettes about life, family, and friendship in contemporary South Korea. As Korean American adoptee author Mi Soon Burzlaff slowly acculturates herself into her birth family and society at large, her writing opens an illuminating window into Seoul’s raw and dynamic identity.

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About the Author: Mi Soon Burzlaff lives in New York, where she and Joanne Kim are starting an organic kimch’i company. She still visits Seoul regularly.

From the Dust Jacket: No one who watched the 1988 Olympics on television will ever forget seeing Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving board during the ninth dive of the springboard preliminaries. Millions felt his pain and then held their breath as the two-time gold medalist returned to the board only minutes later, with four stitches and a waterproof patch, and executed what was perhaps the best dive of the 1988 Olympics.

People around the world knew they were witnessing a singular moment of extraordinary courage and perseverance. Many still remember the dramatic images of the days that followed: Greg’s spectacular diving despite the patch and the stitches, Greg smiling as he tapped his heart to show how hard it was beating, Greg on the platform praying before his final dive, Greg winning his third and fourth gold medals, the very symbol of the Olympic spirit.

At a team banquet after the diving was over, Greg thanked his coach, Ron O’Brien, saying, “Nobody will ever know what we went through, nobody.” And apart from O’Brien and a handful of people close to Louganis, nobody did know—until the publication of this book—that several months prior to the ’88 Olympics, Greg had tested positive for HIV.

Breaking the Surface is the unflinchingly honest story of a man breaking free of a lifetime of silence and isolation. Born to a young Samoan father and Northern European mother, adopted at nine months by Pete and Frances Louganis, Greg began performing at age three in local dance and acrobatic competitions. He started diving lessons at age nine, and at sixteen he won a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But despite his astonishing athletic skill and artistry on the diving board, Greg struggled with late-detected dyslexia, prejudice toward his dark skin coloring, and anguish over his sexual orientation, which he felt compelled to hide.

Being in the spotlight intensified difficulties with personal relationships and substance abuse. Like many other elite athletes, Greg found that the highs that came with winning never compensated for the lows. But despite his demons and personal disappointments, he always conveyed a warmth and grace that people remembered long after the ’88 Olympics.

Greg returned to national prominence when he stepped forward at the 1994 Gay Games in New York City and then urged the U.S. Olympic Committee to move the 1996 volleyball preliminaries from the Georgia county that had passed a resolution condemning gay people.

By speaking out at this time, Greg hopes to raise awareness about a number of key issues, including AIDS prevention and research and domestic violence. “I’m doing it now,” he says, “because I want to tell my story in my own words while I still have the chance. I’m finally ready to tell my story. I hope you’re ready to hear it.”

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About the Author: Greg Louganis is a four-time Olympic gold-medal diving champion. He lives in Malibu, California, where he raises and trains Harlequin Great Danes.

Eric Marcus is the author of several books, including Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945 to 1990; Is It a Choice?; and the forthcoming Why Suicide?

From the Back Cover: Brian Moore is the most controversial figure in Rugby Union today. He has lived and played through one of the most remarkable ages in Rugby’s long history. Up to his retirement from the international game last year, he was a key member of the most successful English team ever. As England’s vice-captain and most-capped hooker, he captivated crowds around the world with a combination of aggression, determination and sheer talent.

On the pitch and to the fans at Twickenham, he is the people’s champion. Off the pitch, however, he is the scourge of the Rugby establishment, a staunch advocate of players’ rights, and a prime mover in the fight to free the game from its outdated amateur laws. His autobiography tells of his life up to this point, from difficult beginnings in a strict Methodist household to becoming a highflying London solicitor and Rugby star with the Harlequins, the British Lions and, of course, England. His story is truly a reflection of Moore himself, brutally honest, controversial and never less than entertaining.

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About the Author: Stephen Jones has been the Rugby Correspondent of the Sunday Times for ten years and is now regarded as one of the world’s leading commentators on the sport. He has won the Whitbread Prize for rugby writing, and was Welsh Sports Journalist of the Year in 1994. His book Endless Winter won the William Hill-Sportspages sports book of the year in 1994 and was described by one reviewer as “the best book ever written on rugby.” He also co-wrote At the Centre, the story of Jeremy Guscott.

He was born in Newport, Gwent, and played rugby until journalistic demands intervened. He now lives in Berkshire with his wife, Karen, and three children: Andrew, Rosanna and Duncan.

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By the Same Author: Beware of the Dog: Rugby’s Hard Man Reveals All (2010, Simon & Schuster), among others.

From the Back Cover: Fusing relationship with self reflection, Robert Andersen and Rhonda Tucker hope to generate sufficient intensity to illuminate the extent adoption colors everyday experience. Written by adoptees for adoptees, this book attempts to view the consequences of relinquishment unrefracted through platitudes. The view from their bridge highlights difficulties in the adoptive experience and suggests avenues for resolution. The authors call it as they lived it and view adoption in a broader context than search and reunion.

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About the Author: Robert Andersen, M.D., obtained his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and did his psychiatry residency at St. Louis University. He practices psychiatry at the Veterans Administration Hospital in St. Louis, working with combat-related, post-traumatic stress disorder. He is the author of Second Choice: Growing up Adopted, as well as several articles on topics ranging from prisoners of war to adoption. Robert was sold through the black market for $250 at age four days.

Rhonda Tucker earned two Associate of Arts degrees, one in early childhood education and one in arts and science with an emphasis in psychology. She teaches elementary and junior high school art in Seattle, Washington. Placed for adoption in Spokane, Washington, at three months, she grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Rhonda found her birth family eight years ago, also in Seattle. A poet all her life, this is her first published work.

Where we came from, nothing good could be expected. We were declared a bad lot from birth.” Isa, adopted daughter in search of her biological mother’s past, discovers harsh words in the diary a lost and found grandmother hands over to her grandchild. Isa discovers Esther Hartmann and her criminal past. She encounters the people her mother mixed with, hears her brother David exclaim: “We are those who do not belong. Exclusion has become part of our identity. We define ourselves not with what we are, but with what we are not.” Slowly, Isa perceives the tragic youth that led to a prostitute’s career and pushed David to take the road. Reads of her mother’s involvement in a spectacular escape from prison, her association with a man who murdered cold-bloodedly. David has his own tale to tell. It is the tale of a man with Roma origins. Isa discovers a dark blot in Switzerland’s past: the systematic snatching of Yeniche children from their parents with the sole aim of forcibly settling the wandering tribes. A crime committed over decades and still unpunished. Esther, David and Isa, they all searched and search for their roots. Esther’s outcry was meant for her own mother and reaches Isa almost twenty years after it was written: “Mother, those clumsy words are for you. You threw your baby daughter into the garbage bin of charity before she could recognize you. My own daughter will be thrown upon the mercy of well-meaning people. What will become of her once she discovers her true lineage?” Today, Isa has to deal with her family’s past.

The problem with discovering your roots: the more digging you do, the dirtier you can get. Adopted into middle-class urban respectability, but with origins deep in the heart of a dramatic rural landscape, BRONCLE is a personal journey of discovery intrinsically linked to the bloody past of Ireland; a true story of smuggling, heartbreak, betrayal, adultery, and lifetime of deception and secrecy. About the Author: Brian Bailie lives by Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, a world away from his product design and manufacturing business in China, which owns with his Texan partners. Brian is the author of Prepare Yourself for China, the visitor’s survival guide to China; and, Alzheimer’s Timeline, a layman’s study of dementia in the family.

From the Dust Jacket: In this, his first book for adults, Allan Ahlberg sets out to recover or otherwise conjure up the early years of an oddly enchanted childhood lived out in a Black Country town in the 1940s. He writes of fugitive memories, the ones that “shimmer on the edge of things,” “trapdoors in the grass,” “Dad’s dancing overalls.” He writes of childhood and the end of childhood, Flash Gordon and the Claymen, Sir Isumbras at the Ford, and the memorable circumstance of his own four parents: “Two mothers, two fathers and me like a parcel or a baton (or a hot potato!) passed between them?”

In a mix of prose and verse, supported by documents, drawings and old photographs, The Bucket retrieves a childhood which lovers of the Ahlbergs’ classic picture book Peepo! might feel they have glimpsed before, but which is now exquisitely brought to life.

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About the Author: Allan Ahlberg was born in south London but grew up in the Black Country. He has worked as a teacher, a postman, a gravedigger and a plumber’s mate. He is also a highly successful writer of children’s books whose titles include Please Mrs Butler and Heard it in the Playground, and together with Janet Ahlberg he has created a number of picture books which have already achieved classic status—Burglar Bill, Each Peach Pear Plum, Peepo! and The Jolly Postman. His most recent picture book is The Goldilocks Variations, illustrated by his daughter Jessica. He now lives in Bath.

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By the Same Author: Master Track’s Train (1997, Puffin/Viking), among others.

From the Back Cover: Stepping into the past, Paolo Hewitt embarks upon an inspiring journey to track down a group of friends he grew up with at Burbank Children’s Home.

We meet Des, the boy who reinvented himself; Norman, the runaway child who crossed a continent; David, the boy who couldn’t be heard; and Terry, the child who stood in a school field for four days. Paolo brings to life the struggles and triumphs of adults navigating life with care, and discovers many things about himself, about care, but most of all about the indomitable force of the human spirit—even when faced with the most overwhelming odds.

But We All Shine On is a worthy companion to the Paolo Hewitt’s classic memoir The Looked After Kid: My Life in a Children’s Home.

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About the Author: Paolo Hewitt is a journalist and author of over 20 acclaimed books spanning music, fashion and sport. He is also author of the acclaimed memoir The Looked After Kid, which recounts his life as a foster child and, later on, at Burbank Children’s Home.

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By the Same Author: The Looked After Kid: Memoirs from a Children’s Home (2002, Mainstream Publishing).

From the Back Cover: Since the 1992 publication of Butterbox Babies, the Ideal Maternity Home in Chester, Nova Scotia, has become synonymous with illegal adoptions and suspicious baby deaths. Much attention has been giving neglect of infants at the Home, the exorbitant fee paid by adoptive parents and the secretive nature of transactions.

But what became of the children who were adopted? What effect did their shaky beginnings have on their lives? Were they loved and cherished, or mistreated and ignored? Did they feel like “family”? did they always wonder who they were?

In this comprehensive book, author and Survivor Robert Hartlen has compiled the personal stories of thirty-six of the adult adoptees who survived the Ideal Maternity Home. Here we share in their most private memories and experiences: the painful struggles to come to terms with being adopted, the epic searches to find birth families, and the heartening sense of a surrogate family many adoptees found in many fellow Survivors. Also included are stories of some of the birth mothers who gave up their children, and some of he adopted mothers who claimed the babies as their own.

Underlying all the stories is the terrifying realization that except for an act of fate, or of grace, these Survivors might have shared an unmarked grave with their innocent fellow infants known and remembered as the “Butterbox Babies.”

At once uplifting and disquieting, these stories not only force us to confront a painful chapter in Nova Scotia’s history, but also challenge us to reconsider the whole notion of “family.”

From the Back Cover: Jean Downie has written about her enterprise in the words she would use in conversing with a friend. Here is a woman who is artless, frank, and full of awe for the way it all turned out.

Vowing to find her birth mother and sister—ostensibly for medical records—she sent letters to people around the world, sometimes only on the strength of a surname.

Her methodology was simple and complex, straightforward and crafty. He book will be regarded as a handbook for those who seek their biological families.

I recommend Jean Downie’s By Order of Adoption to anyone wanting to better understand what it feels like to be adopted, and how healing the search and reunion process can be for all concerned. Jean’s story demonstrates that adoption is truly a “life long experience.”

Dirck W. Brown, Ed.D.
Co-author, Clinical Practice in Adoption
Vice President, American Adoption Congress

NOT EVERYONE AGREES!

A Fort Lauderdale-based agency dedicated to reuniting birth families has launched an attack against this book. They cite every reason but the real one! Why don’t they want people to know what it takes to get the facts when records are sealed “By Order of Adoption”?

More than just one woman’s search for information about the biological mother she believed had died in childbirth, this book explores the mind and feelings of an adopted child. Call Me Ella is a heartwarming and uplifting story about a young girl who considered her adoptive parents her “real parents,” yet needed to know more. She needed to know her roots. Her heritage. With a burning desire to have someone who “looked like her,” she couldn’t wait to marry and have children of her own. She had no idea that her twenty-four year search, which did not begin until after both of her parents had passed away, would involve Sopranos-like tales of organized crime, gambling, and infidelity. Kaufman grew up thinking she killed her mother. As a child, when her adoptive mom answered her question, “Where did I come from?” by saying her birth mother died in childbirth, she believed in her heart she killed the woman who gave her life. She kept asking her mom the same question, hoping to get a different answer. Maybe she’d learn her birth mother had been ill, that it wasn’t her fault she died. When Kaufman finally got old enough to figure out it took two people, a man and a woman, to have a child, she asked a new question: “What happened to my birth father? Did he die too?” That’s when her mom shot her foot through the kitchen wall screaming, “Don’t ever ask me that again.” It took her years to realize why that question hit a nerve. In New Jersey, when a baby is adopted, their original birth certificate is sealed, making it seem as if the child did not exist before the adoption. Kaufman never even knew her birth mother’s last name until she discovered her adoption papers a week before her mom passed away. Unfortunately, when her mom died with her secrets intact, she thought she’d never learn about her ethnic background or medical history. She wasn’t ready to give up. She needed to know more. She needed to know the big secret that kept her mom from answering her questions. With determination and the unexpected help from a self-proclaimed “romantic” stranger, she set out to find her roots. Call Me Ella is a memoir of love, family, loss and perseverance. It shows how we can work to achieve our happy endings.

An impressive second anthology of American Indian and First Nations adoptee narratives, Called Home examines how Native American adoptees and their families experienced adoption and were exposed to the genocidal policies of governments who created Indian adoption projects. The editors Trace A. DeMeyer and Patricia Busbee, both adoptees, found other Native adult survivors of adoption and asked them to write a narrative. In the part one of Called Home, adoptees share their unique experience of living in Two Worlds, feeling called home, surviving assimilation via adoption, opening sealed adoption records, and in most cases, a reunion with tribal relatives. Adoptees who wrote in Two Worlds provide updates in part two. In part three, adoptees still searching for their families share their birth information, date and location. Recent history about the Supreme Court case involving Baby Veronica and The New Normal: DNA is also covered by co-editor Trace DeMeyer. This new anthology offers even more revelations of this hidden history of Indian child removals in North America, their impact on Indian Country and how it impacts the adoptee and their entire family. These unforgettable accounts of Native American adoptees will certainly challenge beliefs in the positive outcomes of closed adoptions in the U.S. and Canada and exposes the genocidal policies of governments who created Indian adoption projects.

An autobiographical account of a child adopted at age four from a Russian orphanage. This memoir tells the story of a young man who is able to achieve success over early childhood adversity.

Camelliastorch: An Adoptee’s True Story is a chronological review of my personal adoption search. It includes the defining discovery that ended my lifelong identity crisis and the beginning of a new pathway of hope within my life. It also discusses the Adoption “Triad” and it’s importance in an adoption search. During the lifelong process of searching I discovered that my grandmother was Claire Phillips a forgotten heroine from WWII in Manila. An entertainer whose performance of a lifetime as the spy, “High Pockets” aided the underground resistance movement in the Philippines and the final chapter of War in the South Pacific. The book takes a deeper look at the lives of adoptees and the emotional impact that adoption has on our world today. Hopefully the book might help other adoptees to decide on their own what is best for them and for myself a reminder of how important knowing ones cultural and biological lineage is in our society. No matter how controversial an adoption search may be, it is an important phenomenon in our world today—that enabled me to consider different aspects of “healing” and the emotional human process of identity.

From the Back Cover: Candle in the Mirror tells of an adopted person making a long journey to seek her heritage. Erin was adopted through an agency but resided in a convent, described as a mother-and-baby home, run by Good Shepherd nuns.

Erin loved, and had a good relationship, with her adoptive parents but not one which allowed her to share with them her need to know more about her past. The subject was taboo since her childhood. For an adoptee to search for their biological family is not showing disrespect to their adoptive family.

Often it is major life events which prompts a search for roots and culture and in Erin’s case it was the birth of her children. The results of her search are fascinating and become profoundly disturbing to her, resulting in her needing to travel to Ireland to learn more.

It soon becomes clear there is to be no reunion with her biological mother. In the 1950s and 1960s influences deeply rooted in religion and society prevailed. She resorts to furtive means to uncover more information resulting in many fascinating encounters and friendships. Each of these contributes a strand of resolution for her as an adult.

This book is a compelling read, exposing a little-explored aspect of our social history, piercing the aura of secrecy which still prevails today around adoption.

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About the Author: Erin Altrama was born in Scotland in 1956. Her biological mother was aged 23 at the time and came from Ireland. She was then adopted by a Catholic couple and spent her childhood in Edinburgh. She still lives in Scotland with her husband, and is the mother of two grown children.

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By the Same Author: When a Heart Has No Ears (2012), Adapted to Adoption (2013), and Iníon (2014).

Autobiography of a boy from one of the poorest areas of South Shields who became butler of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Contents: List of Illustrations; Foreword; Introduction; Part I: Early Days; Part II: ‘We are the Orphanage Boys!’.

A higher “stream of consciousness” concerning adoption. This book captures the spirit of a troubled child and a renewed heart. Caroline and Just Me reflects a very personal narrative of the author as seen through the child within. The work serves as a catharsis tracing the painful and devastating path of her childhood through the spiritual, philosophical and emotional awakening she experienced as a mature adult. Adopted at 18 months old, Caroline’s adopted mother, through her own fears and deep need for control, was physically and emotionally abusive. Caroline lived with abandonment and heartache as companions during her youth. She portrays the unconditional love of her adoptive father which made all the difference, invented an alter-ego to transfer some of the emotions she felt and help her ease the difficulties of day-to-day living. Caroline and Just Me reflects a higher “stream of consciousness” kind of writing literature which the author leads us on her journey from pain to peace. In the motif, we find a child who only becomes an adult when she lays to rest the anguish and insecurities of the past and looks to the present and future with a clearer, more healthy sense of self. Through her struggles, love of God, fulfilling love of family and “real” self, Caroline Carden emerges as an adult writer, who colorfully tells her story. Caroline and Just Me not only touches our hearts, but transforms our souls. — Daniel Collins

From the Back Cover: Abandoned by his parents when he was just three years old, Rob Mitchell began his journey as one of the last “lifers” in an American orphanage. As Rob’s loneliness and rage grew, his hope shrank. Would he ever find a real family or a place to call home?

Heartbreaking, heartwarming, and ultimately triumphant, this true story shows how, with faith, every person can leave the past behind and forge healthier, happier relationships.

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About the Author: Authentic and dynamic, R.B. Mitchell is an encourager who shares from the heart—offering practical solutions that touch and encourage businesses, youth, and ministries.

From the Back Cover: Cats on a Magic Carpet is about real lives, feline and human, as well as the paranormal phenomena which the author regularly experiences. Telepathy, miraculous cures, reincarnation, ghost Cats, spirit guidance, spirit possession, remote viewing and poltergeist activity are included and have all been experienced first-hand by the author. Also recounted is how effectively a cat can wreck a relationship!

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About the Author: M.L. Duncan shares her life with an assortment of animal companions, feline, canine, equine and avian at her remote and idyllic riverside home in County Clare, Ireland. Although currently working full-time as a Quality Engineer in the Medical Device Manufacturing Industry, her dream is to rescue animals in need and to write full time. Cats on a Magic Carpet is her first book and also, hopefully, a first step towards making those dreams into a reality.

From the Back Cover: Home is the place where our life stories begin. It is where we are understood, embraced, and accepted. It is a sanctuary of safety and security, a place to which we can always return. Down in the dank basement, amid my moldy, hoarded food and worm-eaten books, I dreamed that my real home, the place where my story had begun, was out there somewhere, and one day I was going to find it.

Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, Steve finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and begins to hope that one day he might have a different life—that one day he will find his true home.

A fair-complexioned boy with blue eyes, a curly Afro, and a Polish last name, he is determined to unravel the mystery of his origins and find his birth family. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to learn that nothing is as it appears.

A Chance in the World is the unbelievably true story of a wounded and broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve’s story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.

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About the Author: Steve Pemberton is Divisional Vice-President and Chief Diversity Officer for Walgreens, the first person to hold that responsibility in the company’s 110-year history. A graduate of Boston College and a tireless advocate for equality, access, and opportunity, Steve has enjoyed a successful career as a businessman, entrepreneur, and educator. He and his wife, Tonya, are the proud parents of three children.