Biography Adoption

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.

Identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other’s existence, until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members and tells the girls’ incredible story from their perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life.

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.

Journey to My Daughter is about becoming a mother. It details everything from author Jennifer Rose Asher’s decision to have a child, two miscarriages, a whirlwind trip to Vietnam, and how she eventually found her daughter. Along the way, Jennifer and her husband tried multiple approaches while looking for a child and would never have predicted how and where they would find her.

In the late 1960s, at the age of eighteen and living far from home amidst the thriving counterculture of Ottawa, Marilyn Churley got pregnant. Like thousands of other women of the time she kept the event a secret. Faced with few options, she gave the baby up for adoption. Over twenty years later, as the Ontario NDP government’s minister responsible for all birth, death, and adoption records, including those of her own child, Churley found herself in a surprising and powerful position–fully engaged in the long and difficult battle to reform adoption disclosure laws and find her son.

After two years of waiting to adopt - slogging through paperwork and bouncing between hope and despair - a miracle finally happened for Vanessa McGrady. Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay. Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions.

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.

Son of My Soul - The Adoption of Christopher is not just about the joys of motherhood, but is also a self-help audiobook about breaking the circle of child abuse. The author considers her childhood as "boot camp" and uses the lessons learned from her own abuse to help her beloved son through many surgeries and therapies to correct cleft lip and palate.

The story begins with her early years spent in El Salvador with her mother and grandmother, Rosa Eva and Mamita Ines. Anna was eight years old when she set out to immigrate to the US on foot; from that point on, she moved from one foster home to another. The struggles she faced, the people she met along the way, the relationships that came together and fell apart—they have shaped and transformed Anna into the woman she is today.

The road to parenthood can be long and bumpy. Emaline Ashe's real-life memoir shares an intimate look into her emotional journey to become a mom. She and her husband Liam were a young and healthy couple when they started trying for a child. And then, unexplained infertility hit them like a ton of bricks. After many years of unsuccessful medical treatments, Emaline and Liam embarked on a alternate path to become parents. This led to an unexpected open adoption. As their newborn son grew, so did their relationship with their bonus family.

A gifted young man endured a tormented childhood at the hands of his mentally troubled adoptive mother. Told that his birthmother had died to give him life, he shouldered the blame yet still found the strength to attempt the impossible. With a week’s worth of clothes and a guitar, he left his small town for New York City to make his mark as a singer/songwriter.

Cuong was born during the Vietnamese war and was transported in a cardboard box, by soldiers, to Australia where he was adopted. Other children objected to his exotic appearance, so different from that of his curly-haired, blue-eyed family, but his adopted family always reassured him and his brother stuck up for him against bullies. Through Cuong's eyes, children can learn about the pain of being different and the joy of being loved, by people who adopt, adore and stand up for him.

Born in 1938 and adopted soon after, Kate Foley grew up in London during WWII. The Don't Touch Garden explores what it is to be adopted, both for the child and the adoptive parents, through a wide range of poetic styles and complex emotions.