From the Back Cover: A Child Called “It” is the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games—games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother’s games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an “it.”

Dave’s bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing and no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive—dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son.

Through each struggle you’ll find yourself enduring his pain, comforting his loneliness and fighting for his will to survive. This compelling story will awaken you to the truth about child abuse—and the ability we all have to make a difference.

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About the Author: Dave Pelzer is recognized as one of the nation’s most effective and respected communicators addressing corporate groups, conventions and human-service professionals. Dave’s unique accomplishments have garnered general commendations from former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. In 1993 Dave was honored as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Americans and in 1994 was the only American to be honored as one of The Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Dave was also selected as a Torchbearer for the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay. Dave has dedicated his life to helping others help themselves.

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By the Same Author: The Lost Boy: A Foster Child’s Search for the Love of a Family (1994) and A Man Named Dave: A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness (1999, Dutton), the second and final volumes in Mr. Pelzer’s autobiographical trilogy; Help Yourself: Celebrating the Daily Rewards of Resilience and Gratitude (2000, Dutton), a self-help book based upon his experiences and life lessons; and The Privilege of Youth: A Teenager’s Story of Longing for Acceptance and Friendship (2004, Dutton), the final chapter in his story of survival.

Begging on the frigid streets of Harbin, Manchuria, the little Russian refugee Giorgi knew only poverty and hunger. Then an American missionary couple adopted him. War in China forced his new parents to flee back to America, but the boy, now named Gordon, vowed that someday he would return to his beloved Chinese people. This is the inspiring story of Gordon Blandford, who gave up a promising business career to be a missionary, only to have his world crumble about him. How he put his life back together will encourage anyone who reads his story.

“Your name is not Glenn Winston.”

The teacher’s eyes narrowed as she moved closer to the small boy with her accusing words. “Your name is Glenn Hester. You don’t belong to the Winstons. You are a foster child.”

It was Glenn’s first day of school, and the teacher’s callous correction filled him with an overwhelming sense of shame. Rebuffed and ridiculed, Glenn knew he was marked. He was “Glenn Hester, foster child, the kid who belonged to nobody.”

It was his misfortune, however, that he did belong to “somebody”—since the age of three, Glenn had been the legal ward of the New York Board of Welfare. He had been the unwanted child of a woman who was, herself, hopelessly patterned by economic depression and emotional poverty.

“I was just a toddling baby when the tenderness inside me began to die. I have no early dreams of laughter and warmth. I only remember feeling alone. Alone and afraid.”

Alone and afraid, Glenn was forced to learn the tough, unwritten code of survival. Dumped, uprooted, and yanked from one “home” to the next, Glenn mastered the guerilla tactics of the “incorrigible.”

Glenn was caught on a collision course—a course charted by bureaucratic red tape and legal expediency. It was a short road from Pinewood Farms (clean, polished, and shining—“a suburb of hell”) to Spofford (New York’s holding facility for teenage criminals) to threats of murder. At age twenty-five, he knew intimately the outrage of humiliation and injustice. What more could he lose?

Child of Rage is more than Glenn Hester’s personal story. He is one of the lucky survivors. Child of Rage removes the social blinders that allow thousands of unseen, unwanted juvenile victims to be deprived of love, trust, and emotional security. It is a plea for action. Now.

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About the Author: Glenn Hester overcame his abusive childhood “with Christ’s help.” Today he is married and makes his living as a maintenance mechanic. He wrote this book to “convince people that there are thousands of foster kids in this country who need some help, some love.” He poses the question, “What are we going to do about it?”

Bruce Nygren, a native of North Dakota, is an editor and writer who lives with his wife and daughter in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his B.A. from the University of North Dakota and his M.S. from Iowa State University. This is his first book.

Gripping story of how two siblings learn the secret of their adoption.

From the Back Cover: In 1950, Kathleen O’Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbor triggered their removal. Kathleen’s mother successfully prosecuted the man, but it was her daughters who received a much harsher sentence when they were committed to Mount Carmel Industrial School in County Westmeath. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the Magdalene Homes. Kathleen and her sisters were subjected to hard labour, floggings, near starvation and humiliation until they were permitted to leave when they reached the age of sixteen.

A turning point in Kethleen O’Malley’s life came when she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to confront her hidden personal history and make it public.

Childhood Interrupted is a deeply moving and inspiring story of a young girl’s resilience.

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About the Author: Kathleen O’Malley is a magistrate in Middlesex. She is married and has a son.

From the Publisher: Two teenagers made a mistake and I’m the result. My Mom couldn’t keep me and abortion was illegal. I was adopted and what a wonderful life I’ve had. A genealogist found my birth Mom. I have been blessed with many experiences I would not have had if I had not been born or adopted.

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About the Author: William M. Wheeler was born in 1939 and adopted at six weeks old. He went to Howe Military school for high school and a year of college before joining the Navy. After eight years of service to his country he became a welder and later a welder/fitter working in shipyards in the Beaumont, Texas, area. He has been a Pilot and flight instructor, both multi-engine and instrument. He was a pilot weather briefer for 15 years for the FAA. He has an associate degree in Business Administration from Ashworth College. He drove as an over-the-road driver for several years. He is now retired and travels as a “workamper.” He is also a graduate of the Institute for Children’s Literature and enjoys writing of his experiences. He is a published author and a regional contest winner and has had his poetry published in a book available from The World Poetry Organization. His story “The Perfect Tree” was a regional contest winner for Christmas of 2012.

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By the Same Author: Stories By Bill.

From the Publisher: Eric Schneider was one of the young victims in the notorious Boy Scout sexual abuse case that rocked Boston in the mid-1980s. It was big news at the time, but not until now have we heard from a survivor of that abuse (all the others except for one committed suicide). Never has there been a more riveting look at the long-term psychological effects of childhood sex abuse.

By his teens, Eric was a drug dealer, arsonist, and small-time thief. By the age of twenty, he was a major crime figure, working under the umbrella of the notorious Whitey Bulger organized crime network. He specialized in armed robberies, with a focus on banks and armored cars transporting large sums of cash. Faced with over 200 years in prison, Schneider testified for the prosecution, sending his partners in crime to prison. He was given a new identity by the Witness Protection Program and he has lived in obscurity since the early 1990s. When his book is published, he will emerge from the safety of witness protection to promote the book.

Schneider will take you on a journey that will expose you to some of the most frightening accounts of human depravity imaginable, regarding both sex abuse and organized crime. A lifetime struggle with addictions to cocaine and alcohol complicate the story, with riveting accounts of his attempts at rehabilitation. Add to that an unlikely love story, and you have the most powerful story of childhood abuse and crime since the 1995 bestselling memoir, Sleepers. All said, The Choir Boy is the inspirational story of a survivor who has been to hell and back, yet still has hope for the future.

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About the Author: Eric Schneider is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, alcohol and cocaine addiction, industrial poisoning, and a life of crime as a member of the infamous Whitey Bulger organized crime syndicate. At one time a professional bank robber, he is now a successful building contractor who has turned his life around and is now in a loving relationship.

From the Back Cover: What if a child, given away at birth, discovers that this very act would set her on the track for a grace-filled life? What if her journey was filled with discovery, passion, and a will to share the startling realization that we can move beyond Karma? Now with her book, Choose Grace: Why Now Is the Time, Loretta invites you to experience your own grace-filled life, and, with her stories and insights, she will show you the way.

She will show you how to move beyond the Law of Karma, or the Cause-and-Effect paradigm, to a life filled with love and productivity within the Laws of Grace. You can experience this gift by:

• recognizing and enforcing the Grace that is already present in your life, and

• invoking grace and adopting the intentions and behaviors that uplift you to live within the higher organization of grace.

Living within the Laws of Grace, Loretta knows, is to experience love, joy, clarity, power to manifest, dimensionality, synchronicity and freedom. Grace is our birthright, and choosing grace opens us to the challenge of living peaceful and purposeful, love-filled lives.

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About the Author: Loretta Engelhardt, EdD, is an educator, a registered nurse, and an entrepreneur, establishing businesses in home healthcare and real estate. Dr. Engelhardt has written a PBS television series and has been published in the areas of biofeedback and self-discipline. Loretta lives in Sedona, Arizona, with husband Ken, often traveling to visit their five children and families.

For those, like me, who can face times where I am frozen by the bright lights, just like a deer, when crossing a street, yet there I am walking out this life when I am seemly in the same spot. This will be mentioned further on. There are times as well it seems, I am in a fog, and I want to move, or take some action, yet the path I need may not seem to be visible to my eye. May you, like me, “choose to stand” in these moments. (Ephesians 6:13).

From an abandoned baby to a millionaire at eighteen. Biker, fisherman and adventurer Chris Michael experienced physical and sexual abuse, abandonment, foster care, adoption, family crisis, military school and an unexpected inheritance in the first 20 years of his life. Hope arrived from an unexpected source and it had nothing to do with fame or fortune. Find out what Chris discovered and how it helped him weather the next challenging circumstances of his life in this gritty, honest memoir.

From the Publisher: Chosen brings together writing and poetry by over 50 UK adopted adults born between 1934 and 1984. Through a broad range of perspectives—adoption within the extended family, late discovery adopted adults, transracial and transnational adoption, those who have searched for their birth family, and by those who did not search but were found by a birth relative—they capture the life-changing power of adoption and the different meanings it can take on at different stages in one’s life. The themes of identity and belonging, loss and grief, roots and searching, family and “post-reunion” relationships permeate these first-hand accounts of adoption, as does the power of acceptance and healing, encouragement and hope, and taking responsibility for the direction one’s life takes, whatever one’s beginnings. Together the writers add to our understanding of the lifelong impact of adoption, offering the reader a wealth of insights and wisdom, together with advice for adopted people and contemporary parents. Chosen is an important, thought-provoking and insightful book—a must-read not only for adopted people and their families, but also for social workers, psychologists, counsellors and anyone else seeking to understand what it is like to be adopted.

The people discussed in Chosen Children were not “born to lose,” but their life histories reflect the powerful influence of the American way of adoption and foster care and of people on the outside who are able to make of adoption and foster care an experience that is destructive. Secrecy is always a temptation to those who are outside of the secret. Lori Carangelo reveals this process through case histories like “why adoptees killed their adopters,” “why most serial-killers are adopters, and alternatives to adoption.” Prison systems, privatization, and alternatives are discussed.

From the Dust Jacket: The history of adoption is the history of the world itself. Children taken in by new families have grown up to dramatically reshape the world in ways most of us do not fully appreciate.

Every story within these pages reminds us of the importance of society’s most important foundation, the nuclear family. When nurtured and loved by parents in a stable home, children are given their best shot at reaching their God-given potential. Adoption is an act of love, self-sacrifice, and commitment that builds bonds between adoptive parents and their kids.

Chosen for Greatness profiles sixteen well-known adoptees—including Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, Gerald Ford, and Faith Hill—who were given the opportunity to change history for the better when they were taken in by their new families. Their contributions and accomplishments span the spectrum from science to sports, religion to entertainment, technology to politics. These adoptees didn’t accomplish what they did in spite of being adopted; rather, it was their adoption that played a positive and critical role on the road to their success.

Through heart-warming true stories, Chosen for Greatness shows how adoption has made the world a much better place, and how adoption is part of God’s plan to ensure that every child enjoys the love of a mother and a father as His own Son did. This is a book of how lives were changed and how we can change lives.

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About the Author: Paul J. Batura is an author, speaker, and the vice president of communications for Focus on the Family. A native of New York, Paul has worked at Long Island’s Newsday and legendary talk radio station WOR. His previous works include Good Day! The Paul Harvey Story and Mentored by the King: Arnold Palmer’s Success Lessons for Golf, Business, and Life. Paul and his wife Julie are the proud parents of three young boys, all of whom they had the privilege of adopting. Together they reside in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The Chosen One is a heart-warming account of one woman’s determined search for her ethnic identity and her subsequent struggle to unite that distant world with the world she has always lived in. Strengthened by her faith in God and driven by a soulful desire to finally know the truth of her adoptive childhood, Maria Brodeur embarks upon a quest that will take her, physically and spiritually, deep into her past to uncover the secrets that have been buried there. Through the labyrinth of social agencies and the monoliths of military protocol, Maria hunts for the clues that will lead her to the man and woman responsible for giving her life. During her journey she discovers a family that she never knew existed, abundant love, and soul-name that had been chanting deep within her heart for years.

Born to a fourteen-year-old girl and an eighteen-year-old high school dropout, the odds of Mark Molzen being in prison, dying young or becoming a drug addict were far more likely than any other outcome. So how did he beat the odds—becoming a successful, highly regarded public relations professional for an $18 billion, Fortune 150 Company? It’s all because of the plan God had for him—a plan that started when his understanding of adoption radically changed. Mark Molzen’s debut explores the stigma surrounding adoption, delves into what the Bible says about this issue, and examines the inherent power of choosing to accept that adoption is part of God’s plan for our lives. Adopted into the “United Nations of Adoption,” a family consisting of two biological children as well as four adopted children of Native American, Asian American, and African American descent, Molzen’s life circumstances changed dramatically the day he was adopted. But his adoption isn’t really the story. This life-altering book will teach adopted children, young and old, and their parents that to change how they feel about adoption, they must first understand how God feels about adoption and then choose to accept what that means for their life. And the good news is, the power to do this is already theirs—the power to choose to believe is available to all. Exploring identity, biblical adoption and salvation as well as other adoption issues, Molzen’s debut should be viewed as just the beginning, a resounding blast of personal honesty and biblical perspective designed to foment a fundamental wave of change in how adoption is viewed. Written to encourage adopted children and their adoptive parents, Chosen with Purpose: A Story of Adoption and Identity is as enlightening as it is uplifting, demonstrating how the word of God can change everything. About the Author: Mark Molzen was born outside of Detroit to a fourteen-year-old ninth grader and an eighteen-year-old high school dropout. At the age of three months, he was adopted into the “United Nations of Adoption,” a family that included two biological children and four adoptive children of Native American, Asian American, and African American descent. Now a spokesperson for an $18 billion, Fortune 150 Company, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in communications from the University of Utah and several professional awards for his role in communications and public relations campaigns. He is also a Greater Phoenix Black Chamber of Commerce board member and a deacon at Bethel Church in Arizona. Molzen and his beautiful wife, Queena, have been married for twenty years and have three amazing sons.

From the Publisher: “Did my mother really try to kill me?”

That was the question he often asked himself.

Abandoned as a baby, Chris Mackie spent his early years against a background of World War II. His foster-mother was all he had. Losing her was the greatest tragedy of his young life. He sank into deep depression. But no one noticed. He was just a child. And there was a war on. Evacuated four times, he felt like a lost parcel. He might have used this unhappy beginning as an excuse for failure, but at the age of ten he decided that he, and he alone, had the power to shape his future.

In 1944 the unwanted boy came to Heacham, Norfolk, where at last he found some good friends. He spent twenty-three years in the RAF. He ran a National Trust house, became an archaeologist, historian and local media personality. He had a long and happy marriage, raising two successful sons.

Even so, in the back of his mind the questions remained. Who were his parents? Why had his mother left him? What became of her?

The search continued for nearly eighty years.

Chris is the moving, funny, heart-warming story of one particular man, who survived a bad beginning and made good.

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About the Author: Mary Mackie: was born in Lincoln during the Second World War. After leaving school she worked as an accounts clerk before she met and married her husband Chris who was in the RAF. They spent some years in Berlin and West Germany, and it was there that she began her career as a writer. She has had sixty books published, mostly romantic novels. Her husband was the Administrator of Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk.

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By the Same Author: A Child of Secrets (1993, Headline), among many others.

Is it possible to let go of illusions instilled in you for several years? Is it possible to break free from fears and religious beliefs? Is it possible that the solid world around us is just a mirage? Can it be possible to transit into a world filled with transcendence, clairvoyants and spiritual mediums? Is it evil or is it fate? Can one run from their own fate? Learn how Katrina-Jane struggled to realize the absolute truth. This is the story of a remarkable struggle, a story that preaches the truth about reality. Illumined by belief, we often create a matrix of illusions for ourselves and spend our entire life in a podium of love and fear. The author of this book wants us to picture her struggle and tell us how she got rid of religious doctrines instilled in her for over 30 years. But it wasn’t simple for her, in the advent of breaking free from religious beliefs and indoctrination the journey led her into the opposite end of the spectrum, a world of visions, colors, clairvoyants and mediums. This is a transformative story about Katrina-Jane’s liberation. How she was terrified and confused when her upbringing taught her that these experiences were subtle symbols of “evil” and had to let go of everything she had learned over all those years. Is it as simple as not going to the church anymore? Is it easy to let go of illusions acquired over time immemorial? Will she be able to deal with such experiences? Learn how she realized what spirit is saying to you is sometimes subtle and sometimes it is a smack over the back of the head. Did her experiences make her realize her true nature or did it simply lead her to spiritual ascension? It’s for you to find out.

Jan Wiseman was born in 1942. She was brought up in Orpington, Kent, with her sister Val by parents Norah and Stanley, a cruel man. When Jan was 16, Norah told Jan that she was adopted and that the revelation was to be kept secret. It was a horrible shock for the teenager but she did as she was told and didn’t say a word. Jan felt rootless, as if she didn’t know who she really was. But life went on and in 1962, she married Brian, the only person she had told about her adoption. A happy couple but unable to have children, Jan and Brian adopted Charles, pledging he would know his story from day one. To their surprise and delight, shortly afterwards, Jan fell pregnant with Ruth. Many happy family times followed. But when Jan was 46, the law regarding birth certificates changed and she began to look for her birth family. It was a long adventure full of surprises, sadness, rejection and ultimately love and acceptance. Almost three decades since she began looking, Jan found the family she longed for. About the Author: This book was written with the support of Your Memoir, a business that helps people write and publish their life stories.

From the Publisher: Citizen of Happy Town is a tribute to the power of resilience. Author Steve Marchand takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster as he recounts the period of his childhood during which he became an orphan, at the age of six. Through an intense reflection, the author describes the daily life at an orphanage called Ville Joie, or Happy Town, as well as his experiences, at times good but at times shocking, with the different families who took him in on a “trial basis.” To ensure the feel of the story remained true to its original version, Steve Marchand translated the book from French to English himself. The result is overwhelming and ultimately leads the readers to a reflection on their own past and present. While Citizen of Happy Town is in no way intended as a clinical or educational tool, those who work with children or in the field of adoption would do well to read it, if only to discover what a child can see and feel in difficult situations.

From the Back Cover: Education is far more than classroom activities. From personal experience, Jala proved this to be true, From her biracial birth in the mid-sixties, she learned many harsh lessons from being put up for adoption, living in foster homes, being adopted, and coping with being different. She learned that, although a child may not always understand events or the actions of others, those things can make life-time impacts, for good or for bad. Through her early years in the educational system, she faced prejudice and taunting, making it difficult to concentrate on her studies. As an adult, however, she turned things around, completing her bachelor’s degree with outstanding grades. She encourages others to value and appreciate both a formal education and the hard knocks of life.

Community Involvement has played a strong role in Jala’s life, from the time she served her mother’s active participation within the community. Through her desire to improve her environment, Jala has taken on bold leadership roles in such organizations as her A.F.S.C.M.E. Local 1583 Union, International and Ceuncil 25 State Conventions, the Medical Center Executive Board, and the Winston-Salem African-American Chamber of Commerce. Jala has also been an active part cipant of the Diverse Solutions Transwomen Support Group in Raleigh, North Carolina Her political activites have allowed her to make positive changes for many people as well as learn to express herself gracefully in public and against opposition. For those who want to create order and change for a better life, Jala encourages them to take an active role to make things happen.

Depression followed Jala from early childhood through the many traumas of her life. While she believes depression may have been inherited from her birth mother, who was institutionalized for clinical depression, she also believes depression can be developed. Jala’s depression took a particularly deep turn for ten years at the tme she had made her gender transition. Her illness became so bad that she even attempted suicide. She shares with the reader many of her unhealthy coping mechanisms, as well as the events and circumstances that helped her to overcome her depression. Her story offers a hopeful message to others that they, too, can overcome depression.

Gender Identity, feeling the compulsions of a gender in the wrong body, is a challenge few people have to face. Jala, growing up as a boy with interests in things and activities of a feminine nature, found herself in a social situation that forced her to hide her true identity. To suppress her feminine drives, she joined the US. Marine Corps, worked tn politics, gained an education, married a loving woman and rased a child But in all those situations, she never stopped feeling the pain for not being able to freely express her true nature. Taking the courageous step to be true to herself, she reveals the hidden story behind her struggle and shares interviews with others who face the same challenge.

Adoption often brings a feeling of abandonment, confusion, and longing for q connection to one’s roots. Born of biracial unwed parents, Jala, as Dave Edward Morris, was adopted by an African-American family at a time in history when race issues had risen to a peak. As a biracial child, Dave faced many confrontations on many levels in the community and in the schools. Jala shares these difficult times, along with interviews with several of her siblings, also adopted. Tq Her delight, she was eventually able to reunite with her biological mother and her siblings. She and her biological siblings are still searching for their brothers, Art and Randy. Her story shows other adoptees ways to go about finding their biological parents.

Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience explores how leaders in the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy address the phenomena of the psychoanalyst’s personal life and psychology. In this edited book, each author describes pivotal childhood and adult life events and crises that have contributed to personality formation, personal and professional functioning, choices of theoretical positions, and clinical technique. By expanding psychoanalytic study beyond clinical theory and technique to include a more careful examination of the psychoanalyst’s life events and other subjective phenomena, readers will have an opportunity to focus on specific ways in which these events and crises affect the tenor of the therapist’s presence in the consulting room, and how these occurrences affect clinical choices. Chapters cover a broad range of topics including illness, adoption, sexual identity and experience, trauma, surviving the death of one’s own analyst, working during 9/11, cross cultural issues, growing up in a communist household, and other family dynamics. Throughout, Steven Kuchuck (ed) shows how contemporary psychoanalysis teaches that it is only by acknowledging the therapist’s life experience and resulting psychological makeup that analysts can be most effective in helping their patients. However, to date, few articles and fewer books have been entirely devoted to this topic. Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience forges new ground in exploring these under-researched areas. It will be essential reading for practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, those working in other mental health fields and graduate students alike. Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Chapter 1: “How Betty and Vincent became Sally and Scott” by Sally Bjorklund (pp. 3-16).

From the Back Cover: Julia Meyers is an adoptee from a German closed adoption who makes the decision to shine light on the truth. In her new book, Coffee and Cake: An Adoptee In Search of Her Past, Meyers takes the reader on a journey across continents and time, as she uncovers the mystery of her past.

An often untold point of view, Meyers dispels many myths in adoption as she honestly lays her emotional journey out for the reader to see. Fierce in loyalty to her adoptive parents, Meyers reveals the true motivation behind her search for her birth family: they are a part of who she is. As she uncovers the answers, new dilemmas emerge. Her family grows, yet as Meyers discovers, each has their own story to tell as well. A beautiful weave of time and place, the book takes the reader from Germany to the United States and proves just how small our world truly is.

Readers will come to understand how societal pressures can lead to misunderstandings, how closed adoptions deny a child’s beginnings, leaving them feeling a piece of who they are is missing, and how time does not always heal all wounds. Ultimately, the story is one of love, the growth of family, the joy of truth, the construction of self-image. Meyers provides us with a much needed piece of the adoption puzzle and a great read to accompany an afternoon with coffee and cake!

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About the Author: Julia Isabell Meyers was born in Germany in 1968. At two months she was adopted by her loving parents and grew up with one younger brother in a small, picturesque German community.

After her high school graduation in 1987, Julia completed a two-year apprenticeship at a local bank. Not being fulfilled with this profession, she began to study Cultural Anthropology at the University in Frankfurt, Germany, and graduated with a Masters Degree in 1995.

In the meantime she had found her love for Archaeology and for four years traveled throughout the world excavating in the American Southwest, Germany and the Andes of Argentina. In 1997 she was accepted at the Ph.D. program to the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. There she met her husband Ross and they married in 1999 in Germany. The couple have two children: Carmen is ten and Sean is eight.

In 1996, Julia Meyers decided to search for her birth mother, who she met for the first time in December of the same year. In 2004, she then continued her search for her birth father, who had been an American soldier stationed in Germany. They met in December 2004. In 2005, when her husband Ross graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, they relocated to the Midwest, where he was born and raised.

Julia finished her Ph.D. in 2007 and is now pursuing her career as a writer. Today Julia and her family are residing near Madison, Wisconsin.

Chelle intertwines how various aspects of her talk show, “Coffee Talk with Chelle” (Guests, Topics, Listeners, Co-Hosts) have helped her cope with different life issues (her adoption-reunion process, losing her parents and having two broken arms, and much more.

From the Dust Jacket: Born in London to a Nigerian princess, Precious Williams saw her life change radically in its first months. Her mother, deciding she couldn’t raise a child, placed an ad for foster care in Nursery World. A response soon came from a woman in rural Sussex, England, and Precious was handed off, a three-month-old bundle in a basket.

Precious’s new foster mother, Nanny, was nearly sixty, and white. She had felt an affinity for “colored” children ever since reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin in school, and prided herself on being “color blind.” But she might have been shortsighted about the difficulties her black daughter would encounter. At her all-white school, Precious was taunted and ostracized, and Nanny struggled to understand her troubles. Precious’s birth mother visited occasionally, providing glimpses of another world, but as Precious grew older, her distant mother became critical of a daughter who had become “too white.”

Retreating into her imagination, Precious forged her own identity. She emerged from the disillusionment and self-destructiveness of her teen years resolved never to let circumstance, class, or color determine her future. In Color, Blind, Precious Williams tells her extraordinary story, weaving together the complexities of identity, motherhood, and race.

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About the Author: Precious Williams has been a contributing editor at the Mail on Sunday’s Night & Day magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Elle in Britain. Her personal essays and celebrity interviews have also appeared in the Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Glamour, Marie Claire, and the New York Post. Precious studied English at Oxford University and journalism at the London College of Printing, and she is currently working toward a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of London. She lives in London.

Accounts of the experience of cross-cultural adoption, by adoptees. These accounts are introduced by Sarah Armstrong, who introduces the project, the issues around cross-cultural adoption, themes arising through the first person accounts and provides statistics on the scale of cross-cultural adoption. In the Introduction, Ms. Armstrong states: “The aim of the project was to draw together the experiences of both Australian-born transracial adoptees and intercountry adoptees ... Of the nine Australian-born adoptees, there were those of Aboriginal, Chinese, Maori, African, and Spanish descent. The countries of origin for the 18 intercountry adoptees were Vietnam, Bangladesh, Fiji, New Zealand (Maori), Burundi, Korea, Colombia, Sri Lanka, India and Canada (North American Indian). The writing of The Colour of Difference has been about discovery and openness and not about blame. The adoptees who gave their stories to us so generously and honestly, with all their various experiences of adoption, wanted the book to be a positive and true reflection of their lives in Australia. Some of them, as you will read, had experienced unkindness or abuse in their adoptive families. The majority had been treated with love and real efforts had been made to incorporate them and their culture into the adoptive family. The participants, as a group, said that they were ‘just trying to be honest’ in writing their stories, not trying to blame their adoptive families, who were generally perceived to be ‘doing their best’...The participants of this book are keenly aware of how their lives might have been. They bear the burden of gratefulness, often to parents who would be appalled to think that their children feel such an emotion. In the public eye, this kind of adoption was, and perhaps still is, a ‘good thing’ to have done, an altruistic gesture. The New South Wales Law Reform Commission, in their Report 81: Review of the Adoption of Children Act 1965 (NSW) state: Approaching intercountry adoption as a form of aid carries with it a danger of placing on the child an implied burden of being grateful for having been ‘saved.’ This can lead to a situation in which the child may feel that his gratitude can never equal what has been done for him and the debt becomes impossible to repay.”

Coming Apart Together tells the true story of two teenagers from Long Island—of different classes and ethnic backgrounds—who meet by chance, fall in love, find their parents will not allow them to marry, and head off to college only to discover that they are going to have a child. The young woman is spirited away to a home for unwed mothers, gives birth, signs the relinquishment papers, returns home. In four years’ time, when they are old enough to marry despite their parents, they do. Over the next twenty-five years, the pair have five more children together. Their first child, adopted at three months of age, grows up in the knowledge that she is different because she is adopted and, as an adult, she begins the search for her birth family. She discontinues it out of fear and then, almost without reason, begins it again in 1998. In that same month, July of 1998, her entire birth family discovers the New York State adoption registry and they are, through it, reunited in February of 1999. This reunion is the impetus of Hipchen’s story, the cataclysm that begins it and ends it both. Coming Apart Together recounts the stories that are necessarily part of any reunion experience, and meditates upon what those stories mean (or don’t mean). It is also an imaginative exploration of what it may feel like to adopt a child, to be an adopted child, to give up a child for adoption, what it might be like to be the other mother, to find other relatives, to have a strange adult show up on your doorstep one day, claiming kinship. Though the plot creates interest, the real beauty of the text is in its language and its capacity for conveying to readers the difficult emotional paths of the birth parents, of their own parents and grandparents, of the adoptive mother and father, and of the adopted daughter at parting, in living apart, and in reunion. About the Author: Emily Hipchen holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Georgia and teaches English and writing at the University of Tampa. She is co-editor, with Joseph and Rebecca Hogan, of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and is a member of the Executive Board and chairs the Conference Planning Committee of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity and Kinship whose inaugural conference will take place in November 2005. She has spoken and written about representations of adoption in literature and art in several venues, including meetings of eighteenth-century scholars, the National Women’s Studies Association conference, and the Modern Language Association conference. Most recently, she edited and with Jill R. Deans wrote the introduction to a special edition of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies on adoption life writing. She is working on a book about such writing, tentatively titled Family Bodies in Adoption Life Writing. She was adopted as an infant and reunited with her birth family in 1999.

From the Back Cover: Who should read this book?

• All the members of the adoption triad

• Anyone in relation to them

• All professionals working with triad members

• Anyone who feels he or she is living an unauthentic life

What you will learn:

• The role of trauma in our lives

• How trauma affects our neurological system

• How the fearful child may be ruling our lives

• How the meaning we give to events controls our beliefs

• How beliefs control our feelings and behavior

• How to uncover our authentic self

• How to gain power by becoming accountable

• How to improve our relationships

• How to improve our reunions

• How to better parent our children

• What professionals need to know to help triad members

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By the Same Author: The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child (1993, Gateway Press).

Growing up as an adoptee, with no knowledge of her heredity or genetic identity, Martha Shideler spent 26 years searching for her birth family. Coming Together: Aan Adoptee’s Story documents her fight, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to know the truth, to discover the missing pieces. This book also describes what it means to grow up adopted-exposing the discrimination and pressures that adoptees are subjected to that do not exist for others. Believing that it is the secrecy-not the information that is kept secret-that damages all members of the adoption triad (adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents), Martha makes an eloquent plea for the civil rights of Adoptees and the elimination of the secrecy inherent in the US adoption system. From frustration and humiliation, Martha’s story move toward its exciting climax as she discovers an entire family and puts the pieces of her life together.

From the Back Cover: Jim Cork’s autobiography highlights his life from birth to the present day. Talking about the two families in his life reflects on some memories that caused joy and pain. We’re taken through a period where the only peace to be gained was to leave home. The development of his Mediumship on his return was already mapped out by Spirit. The group that Jim joined was to train him in all sorts of Spiritual phenomena that some could only dream of. One of the most difficult times was Jim developing and suffering from epilepsy. It’s explained step by step the impact this had, not only from a work point of view but also personal. The death of one of the most important persons in Jim’s life, Tony Stapleton, was to turn his world up-side-down again. He was his Spiritual mentor and manager for 27 years. Jim’s life has been filled with ups and downs which are highlighted throughout. Spirit has never been far behind him as you will learn, and will there for all of us.

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About the Author: Jim Cork was born in Grimsby England in 1953 and adopted by two loving parents at the age of thirteen months. His two older sisters, Babs and Bren plus Bill his brother looked on him as the baby of the family. Jim has been mediumistic since the age of eleven. Joining a home development group at the age of seventeen has finely tuned his mediumistic skills over the years, bringing hope and upliftment to those who have lost loved ones. His book, Communicating with The World Unseen takes us through his journey, and is a fascinating insight into a Mediums life, discovering as much about himself as those in the Spirit World. Jim’s fight with mental illness just proves that his determination to succeed brought him through, with the help of Spirit. Many readers have said, once you start it, it’s very difficult to put down until the last page. Jim is already penning his second, Living with Spirit.

From the Dust Jacket: In late 1942 a brief advert was placed in the Reading Mercury, a newspaper for the local area, reading: “WANTED: HOME FOR BABY BOY, AGE 1 MONTH; COMPLETE SURRENDER.” Two weeks later, on the deserted platform of Reading railway station, a young couple who had read the advert were to fleetingly meet the mother of this baby boy as she passed the child over to them.

The reasons for the surrender of her child were never explained. The boy, Dave Sharp, grew up happily with his replacement parents, the light of their eyes, never knowing the full story of his parentage. A chance discovery some sixty years later was to set him on a quest to uncover the truth behind his mysterious abandonment. The search was not to be easy, nor was it to prove without shocking and uncomfortable revelations, both for Dave and for the family that he discovered. Not only was Dave, a bricklayer by trade, to be united with the brother that he had never had, world-famous novelist Ian McEwan, but the two men were to discover a shared history and relationship closer than they could ever have imagined.

With a foreword by Ian McEwan, this book tells the moving story of Dave’s search for the family that had given him up and the astonishing secrets that lay behind his biological parents “complete surrender” of him.

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About the Author: Dave Sharp and Ian McEwan are long-lost brothers who were recently reunited when Dave decided to try and uncover the truth about his abandonment when he was a baby. Ian McEwan is one of the world’s best-loved living writers whose critically acclaimed books include The Cement Garden, Enduring Love and Atonement. Dave, a bricklayer by trade, lives in South Oxfordshire and is a lifelong supporter of his beloved Reading Football Club.