Biography Adoption

In this unflinching, unforgettable memoir, Regina Louise tells the true story of overcoming neglect in the US foster-care system. Drawing on her experience as one of society’s abandoned children, she tells how she emerged from the cruel, unjust system, not only to survive, but to flourish. After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved.

In 1970, Lynda was 18, unmarried and pregnant when she was forced to give her baby up for adoption. She was sent by a doctor to a Catholic girls’ home for unmarried mothers, and told she’d have no hope of keeping her child because she was Aboriginal. After 26 years, Lynda was finally able to make contact with her lost son – but the much wished for reunion didn’t go well. When she looked into the adoption records, she found a web of lies – lies about her family, the baby’s father, her ‘consent’ for the adoption – and her Indigenous heritage had been completely erased.

Adoption Means Love: Triumph of the Heart has been called "a book for anyone touched by adoption in anyway" by Adoption.com. Real and raw, the book explores the many experiences and emotions of adoptees, adoptive parents, birthparents, foster youth, and foster parents. Named a "Top 5 Inspirational Book" by Dolce Vita Magazine, this book is a virtual field of dreams on the topic of family building through adoption.

Disruptors, entrepreneurs, and unconventional do-gooders, Drs. Jodi and Garry Vermaas are not the people you would expect to parent 12 children. From the child-trafficking slums of Manila to the barren corners of China to the baggage compartment of a long-distance train to Mumbai, each of their children has a tale to tell - if only they could find the words.

Everybody knows what adoption is, but adoption has changed dramatically over recent decades. Open adoptions create an opportunity for biological parents to remain connected with the child even after the adoption takes place. Emotionally, this is still largely uncharted territory for everybody involved and relationships can be difficult to navigate. Told from the point of view of an adoptive father, the journey the Elkins took is such a roller coaster ride you would think this true story was fiction.

Orphaned at birth in South Korea, challenged with medical and developmental complications, and unadopted by age three, Min Soo’s hope of finding a home seems lost. But God chooses a family on the other side of the world who opens their home to this whirlwind of a child. Although Min Soo is dearly loved, his constant challenges tax his adoptive parents to the core. When he’s old enough to understand, Min Soo wonders if God has a purpose for “a child in a man’s body.” He comes to grips with the multiple obstacles he faces—except one.

Everybody knows what adoption is, but adoption has changed dramatically over recent decades. Open adoptions create an opportunity for biological parents to remain connected with the child even after the adoption takes place. Emotionally, this is still largely uncharted territory for everybody involved and relationships can be difficult to navigate. Told from the point of view of an adoptive father, the journey the Elkins took is such a roller coaster ride you would think this true story was fiction.

A raw, often wry, memoir of mothers, mysteries, and miracles. Surrendered at birth in a closed adoption, Candi Byrne’s biology and ethnicity is a secret. The impending arrival of her first grandchild ignites an urgency to identify potential genetic time bombs and confirm her ancestry. Due to arcane privacy laws, Candi is repeatedly denied access to the one person who could provide that information—her biological mother.

The inspirational story of an American woman who moved mountains to secure medical treatments - and eventually a home - for a young Iraqi girl severely burned in a roadside terror attack. This is a story of the astonishing power of self-sacrificial love.

As a child, Susan Silverman was surrounded by a loving family; although her parents weren't happily married, they were devoted to their kids. In a vibrant, funny, imminently relatable voice (think Anne Lamott meets Katrina Kenison), Silverman tells of a family's evolution - from her parents' devastating loss of their infant son to raising bright and wildly unique daughters. It's also the creation story of her own family - raising her own bright and wildly unique daughters and taking a journey to adopt two boys from Ethiopia.

In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and renamed her Elizabeth. Although brought up in a ‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz. She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she come back for me? Why did she abandon me?

Based on a true story, this is the tale of three strong women: Barbara, who was given a blue plastic cow that would later change her life forever; Florrie, who adopted a baby to replace the child she had lost; Carole, forced to give up her daughter by an unforgiving society. Growing up in a loving northern working-class family based on the banks of the River Mersey, Barbara felt that she was different. After accidently discovering that she had been adopted, she was only given a part of the story.

Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants—until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look at Keri Vellis's struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Listeners get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen.

In April 1969, a day before her 22nd birthday, Judith Ellen Bock gave birth to a 5 pound 15 ounce girl in a Tulsa hospital. Under the secrecy of a “NO SHOW, NO TELL” order, even Bock was kept from knowing much of anything about her newborn. Although she consented to the subsequent relinquishment of her parental rights and her daughter’s adoption, she was haunted by unresolved grief that she submerged for years under the mantra that she had “done the right thing.”

House on Fire, a raw and riveting memoir by author and publisher Jenn T. Grace, explores her journey growing up as an adopted child in a chaotic household. Surviving a turbulent childhood marked by family conflict, mental illness, and alcoholism, Grace promises herself that life will get better. But as an adult, Grace’s personal and professional successes belie her inner turmoil.

Michael Reagan's life is much more than just an interesting story. It is a testimony of how Christ allowed him to find healing from many of the issues that confront our culture today, such as sexual abuse, divorce, loneliness, the feeling of rejection, and the belief that God does not care about us. Michael Reagan's first adoption gave him an identity, but he did not find his true identity until he found Christ.

How does a mother cope when she is forced to walk away from her three children and never see them again? That is what happened to JB's mother, Myrtle. Eventually, rescued from her despair by tall, dark, and handsome George Rowley, who fell in love with her, Myrtle started a new life and had seven more children. She buried the grief of losing her first children deep within and kept her pain secret. JB and her siblings were unaware of the existence of Myrtle's first three children until after she died.

As the voices of transracial adoptees gain prominence in academic, literary, and creative works, Adopting Privilege emerges as both a timely and vital contribution to the discourse. Through the lens of an adoptee, Dr. Hasberry’s debut memoir explores the triumphs, challenges, and complexities of transracial adoption, the nuances that make it difficult to hold space for oneself, and the experience that comes with adopting outside of race.

Born in Africa to a Nigerian princess, Precious Williams was less than one year old when her mother put an ad in Nursery World: "Pretty Nigerian baby girl needs new home." Precious's mother had flown to London in search of a new life - a life in which there was no space for a daughter. The first response came rom a 60-year-old white woman, Nan, who prided herself for being "color blind." Correspondence were exchanged, no questions asked, and Precious left her mother for Nan's home in rural England.

From her childhood in China to the moment she won her first National Book Award, literary icon Katherine Paterson shares the personal stories that inspired her children's books. Told with her trademark humor and heart, Paterson's tales reveal details about her life from her childhood with missionary parents, to living as a single woman in Japan, to raising four children in suburban Maryland with her minister husband.