In 1960s America, premarital sex was not uncommon, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle became pregnant. Her unsympathetic family sent her to a maternity home. In the hospital, nurses would not even allow her to hold her own newborn. After she was finally badgered into signing away her rights, her son vanished into an adoption agency's hold.Claiming to be acting in the best interests of all, the adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and place them with families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. They struck shady deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of young women into surrendering their children.Gabrielle Glaser dramatically demonstrates the expectations and institutions that Margaret was up against. Though Margaret went on to marry and raise a large family with David's father, she never stopped longing for and worrying about her firstborn. She didn't know he spent the first years of his life living just a few blocks away from her, wondering often about where he came from and why he was given up. Their tale--one they share with millions of Americans--is one of loss, love, and the search for identity.Adoption's closed records are being legally challenged in states nationwide. Open adoption is the rule today, but the identities of many who were adopted or who surrendered a child in the decades this book covers are locked in sealed files. American Baby both illuminates a dark time in our history and shows a path to justice, honesty and reunion that can help heal the wounds inflicted by years of shame and secrecy.

    Despite knowing that the system's goal is reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their family--even if it means most likely having to give them back. After years of starts and stops, and endless navigation of the complexities and injustices of the foster care system, a phone call finally comes: a three-day old baby girl, named Coco, in immediate need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home. "You were never ours," Sarah tells Coco, "yet we belong to each other." A love letter to Coco, and to the countless children like her, Stranger Care chronicles Sarah's discovery of what it means to mother--in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but the birth mother who loves her, too. Ultimately, Coco's story reminds us that we depend on family, and that family can take different forms. With "fearless, stirring, rhythmic" (Nick Flynn) prose, Sentilles lays bare an intimate, powerful story, with universal concerns: How can we care for and protect each other? How do we ensure a more hopeful future for life on this planet? And if we're all related--tree, bird, star, person--how might we better live?

    

    Adopted people are diverse individuals with differing points of view, yet have been stigmatized into one type of people by the industry leaders. Even though we come from various backgrounds, we've been stereotyped as if all of us are somehow ungrateful if we don't show enough appreciation, labeled as if having Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) when we don't bond as expected, or too negative when we push for answers. This little book proves that we are an assorted population with varying backgrounds, and we should not be reduced to the label of anti-this or anti-that when we ask questions—questions that make the industry uncomfortable. Rather, we should be given the right to ask questions about our background and even gain access to our adoption documents when we inquire. We have the right to ask questions—even if it makes adoption agencies uncomfortable. We should have the right to know if we have blood-related sisters and brothers, aunts, or uncles. None of us should have to go to our graves without having the opportunity to develop friendships with our next-of-kin—if we so wish. This book, containing excerpts from Janine's "Adoption Books for Adults" collection, is completely biased on the rights of adopted people and void of influence from adoption authorities.

    He has lived in a lot of houses, but he still hasn't found his home. When he moves in with Maggie, she shows him respect, offers him kindness, and makes him see things in himself that he's never noticed before. Maybe this isn't just another house, maybe this is a place Calvin can call home, for a while.

    She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers―which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues.To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for the adoption paperwork and investigate search options, and the sisters will split the costs involved in locating their birth relatives. But their adoptive parents aren't happy that their daughters want to locate their birth parents―and that is only the first of many obstacles Julie will come up against as she digs into her background.Julie's search for her birth relatives spans years and involves a search agency, a PI, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist. By journey's end, what began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest―one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.

    I have a job to do:Watch the club princess, don’t touch her, then report back to the president of the Devil’s Dust MC.But I have to step out of my place as a prospect to save the spoiled brat.She thinks she’s cute, trying to tempt me to break her dad’s one rule.What she doesn’t know is that I’ll throw her over my knee and spank the daddy issues from her until she’s looking nowhere but at me.That’s the plan, until secrets emerge from our pasts that spark a ravenous surge of destruction and chaos, and have us both wondering where we stand in the final ride.

    Now with help from police constable Layke Jackson, she must keep the child safe. But can they rescue the other abducted children and bring down the gang…all while protecting a little boy and keeping themselves alive?From Harlequin Love Inspired Suspense: Courage. Danger. Faith.

    It’s 2019: Charlie’s tightly contained Wellington life with her grandson Tommy is interrupted by the unexpected intrusions of Tommy’s first girlfriend, Jenna, and the father he has never known, Jim. The year turns, and everything changes again.Loop Tracks is a major New Zealand novel, written in real time against the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic and the New Zealand General Election and euthanasia referendum.‘Loop Tracks is an urgent and unexpected novel about freedom and responsibility – about a woman forced to wear her solitary and unsupported choice as a puzzling mistake, and about the very present past that she must face to help her family and herself.’ —Elizabeth Knox‘This fictional inter-generational story will speak to a wide readership about the choices that are important for our future.’ —Dame Margaret Sparrow

    Wade legalized abortion, adoptee Megan Culhane Galbraith was born in a Catholic charity hospital in New York City to a teenaged resident of the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a home for unwed mothers. Decades later, on the eve of becoming a mother herself, she would travel to the former guild site; to her birth mother’s home in Scotland; and to Cornell University, where she discovered the startling history of its Domestic Economics program. There, from 1919 to 1969, coeds applied scientific principles to domesticity as they collectively mothered a rotating cast of babies awaiting adoption. The babies shared the last name Domecon and provided the inspiration for Galbraith’s art project, The Dollhouse.  The Guild of the Infant Saviour is a dizzyingly inventive hybrid memoir of one adoptee’s quest for her past. Galbraith pairs narrative with images from The Dollhouse as she weaves a personal and cultural history of adoption as it relates to guilt, shame, grief, identity, and memory itself.  Ultimately, she connects her experiences to those of generations of adoptees, to the larger stories America tells about sex and motherhood, and to the shadows those stories cast on us all.

    When Mindy, one of those children, announces her plans to return to Vietnam to find her birth mother, her loving adoptive family is suddenly thrown back to the events surrounding her unconventional arrival into their lives.Though her father supports Mindy's desire to meet her family of origin, he struggles privately with an unsettling fear that he'll lose the daughter he's poured his heart into. Mindy's mother undergoes the emotional roller coaster inherent in the adoption of a child from a war-torn country, discovering the joy hidden amid the difficulties. And Mindy's sister helps her sort through relics that whisper of the effect the trauma of war has had on their family--but also speak of the beauty of overcoming.Told through three strong voices in three compelling timelines, The Nature of Small Birds is a hopeful story that explores the meaning of family far beyond genetic code.

    

    

    Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity. As an adult, Carroll forged a path from city to city, struggling along the way with difficult boyfriends, depression, eating disorders, and excessive drinking. Ultimately, through the support of her chosen black family, she was able to heal. Intimate and illuminating, Surviving the White Gaze is a timely examination of racism and racial identity in America today, and an extraordinarily moving portrait of resilience.

    But for Elvis, being chosen by Mrs. Pemberton is a nightmare. He’s been separated from his sister, Etta, and is determined to get back to the shelter to find her. In spite of himself, Elvis becomes curious about ten-year-old Georgina Pemberton, who builds LEGO skyscrapers in her bedroom while navigating her parents’ separation. The longer he’s in his new home, the more he starts recognizing new feelings: admiration for Georgina’s creations, affection for the other pets, and even empathy for the Pembertons—despite their inability to listen.  As Georgina sets out to build her most important skyscrapers yet—the Twin Towers—Elvis realizes that maybe both humans and animals can take a page from Georgina’s Big Book of American Architecture and “build a world of their own choosing,” even if the choices aren’t what they’d initially expected.

    What White Parents Need to Know About Transracial Adoption breaks down the dynamics that frequently fly under the radar of the whitewashed, happily-ever-after adoption stories we hear so often.Written by Melissa Guida-Richards--a transracial, transnational, and late-discovery adoptee--this book unpacks the mistakes you don't even know you're making and gives you the real-life tools to be the best parent you can be, to the child you love more than anything.From original research, personal stories, and interviews with parents and adoptees, you'll learn: • What parents wish they'd known before they adopted--and what kids wish their adoptive parents had done differently • What white privilege, white saviorism, and toxic positivity are...and how they show up, even when you don't mean it • How your child might feel and experience the world differently than you • All about microaggressions, labeling, and implicit bias • How to help your child connect with their cultural heritage through language, food, music, and clothing • The 5 stages of grief for adoptive parents • How to start tough conversations, work with defensiveness, and process guilt

    Born with spina bifida in Russia, Tatyana was raised in an orphanage where she walked on her hands for the first six years of her life. In 1994, she was adopted and moved to the United States, where she started racing and breaking records; and is now considered the best female wheelchair racer of all time, and the fastest woman on Earth.Source: Netgalley

    A perfect read for LGBTQ+ and adoptive families!"My daddies are amazing. They're funny, kind, and smart. And when they read me stories...exciting journeys start!"Set off on a series of incredible adventures with an endearing family as the bedtime stories they read burst into colorful life. Together, the daddies and their little one battle dragons, dodge deadly dinosaurs, zoom to the moon, and explore the world in a hot air balloon, before winding down in a wonderfully cozy ending.Activities available!

    But along the way, she finds much more.Two half-sisters.A slew of cousins on both sides.A family waiting to be discovered. With the assistance of a distant cousin in Sweden and several other DNA angels on the internet, Daniels finally comes face to face with her birth mother just months before her passing. Join in on this author’s discovery of family and self in Finding Sisters: How One Adoptee Used DNA Testing and Determination to Uncover Family Secrets and Find her Birth Family“Finding Sisters is an excellent example of what it takes to solve a family mystery. Yet it’s also a captivating story of human relationships in the age of secrecy-revealing DNA databases…. Refreshingly honest and personal. Like no other DNA success story, Finding Sisters uses footnotes and family tree diagrams to show exactly how the search unfolds. This makes the book a clever hybrid of a memoir and a case study” - Richard Hill, author of Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA

    Regardless of whether you're a stepparent, foster parent or adoptive parent, it is on you to take on the challenge of caring for them, helping them to move forward while also meeting their unique emotional needs.

    After many missteps and dead ends, Ross uncovered her heartbreaking and inspiring origin story and began navigating the complicated turns of reuniting with her birth parents and their new families. Through backcountry travel in the American West, she also came to understand her place in the world, realizing that her true identity lay not in a choice between adopted or biological parents, but in an expansion of the concept of family.

    

    Real conversations about racism need to start nowLet's Talk Race confronts why white people struggle to talk about race, why we need to own this problem, and how we can learn to do the work ourselves and stop expecting Black people to do it for us.Written by two specialists in race relations and parents of two adopted African American sons, the book provides unique insights and practical guidance, richly illustrated with personal examples, anecdotes, research findings, and prompts for personal reflection and conversations about race.Coverage includes:Seeing the varied forms of racismHow we normalize and privilege whitenessEssential and often unknown elements of Black history that inform the presentRacial disparities in education, health, criminal justice, and wealthUnderstanding racially-linked cultural differencesHow to find conversational partners and create safe spaces for conversationsConversational do's and don'tsLet's Talk Race is for all white people who want to face the challenges of talking about race and working towards justice and equity.

    

    May this provide yourself and your family with a guide to start conversations around the complexities of adoption.

    This memoir travels across literal continents--and continents of desire as Beatty finds her birthfather, a Canadian hockey player who's won three Stanley Cups--and her birthmother, a working-class woman from Pittsburgh. This is not the whitewashed story, but the real story, where Beatty writes through complete erasure: loss of name and history, and a culture based on the currency of gratitude as expected payment from the adoptee. American Bastard sandblasts the exaltation of adoption in Western culture and the myth of the "chosen baby." This journey into the relationship of place and body compels and unhinges, with the link between identity and blood history as its driving force. Beatty rescripts the order of things: the horizontal world of the birth table where babies are switched, the complex yard of the body where names and blood shift and revolt, and the actual story into the relationship of place and the insurrection of the body erased. Issues of class and struggle run throughout this book, this narrative river between blood and continents, between work and desire.

    After several months hidden in her parents' attic bedroom, she gave birth to a daughter at the Salvation Army's Booth Memorial Hospital, a home for unwed mothers in St. Paul, and surrendered her for adoption. More than 30 years later, Kim's older sister reunited with her birth family. Kim's mother had written about her experiences, but after she died, Kim still had questions. Using careful research and sensitive interviews with other "Booth girls," Heikkila tells the stories of the Booth hospital and the women who passed through it—and she learned more about her own experience as an adoptive mother.

    

    ... This memoir shifted my perceptions in the way only compassionate and vulnerable writing can.” —Monica Meneghetti, Lambda Literary finalist and award-winning author of What the Mouth Wants When starting the adoption process, Jane Byers and her wife could not have predicted the illuminating and challenging experience of living for two weeks with the Evangelical Christian foster parents of their soon-to-be adopted twins. Parenthood becomes even more daunting when homophobia threatens their beginnings as a family, seeping in from places both unexpected and familiar. In this moving and poetic memoir, Byers draws readers into her own tumultuous beginnings: her coming out years, finding love, and the start of her parenting journey. Little did Byers know that her experiences when coming out was merely training for becoming an adoptive parent of racialized twins. Small Courage: A Queer Memoir of Finding Love and Conceiving Family is a thoughtful and heart-warming examination of love, queerness and what it means to be a family.