About the author’s experience of being in and out of homes as a child and rises the question of the rights of adoptive children to know the identity of their real parents.

From the Back Cover: Caitríona Palmer had a happy childhood in Dublin, raised by loving adoptive parents. When she was in her late twenties, she established contact with her birth mother, Sarah, and they developed a close attachment. But Sarah set one painful condition to this joyous new relationship: she wished to keep it—to keep Caitríona—secret from her family, from her friends, from everyone.

Who was Sarah, and why did she want to preserve a decades-old secret? An Affair with My Mother tells the story of Caitríona’s quest to answer these questions, and of the intense, furtive “affair” she and her mother conducted in carefully chosen locations around Dublin. By turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, An Affair with My Mother is a searing portrait of the social and familial forces that left Sarah—and so many other unwed Irish mothers of her generation—frightened, traumatized and bereft. It is also a beautifully and tenderly written account of a remarkable relationship.

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About the Author: Caitríona Palmer lives in Washington, DC, where she works as a freelance journalist. She is married to a fellow journalist, with whom she has three children. An Affair with My Mother is her first book.

From the Dust Jacket: Helen Fremont was raised Roman Catholic in America, only to discover in adulthood that her parents were Jews who had survived the Holocaust. Delving into the extraordinary secrets that held her family together in a bond of silence for more than forty years, she recounts with heartbreaking clarity and candor a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the eloquence of truth.

When Helen was small, her mother taught her the sign of the cross in six languages. Theirs was the tender conspiracy of a little girl and her mother at bedtime, protected by a God who could respond in any language. What she didn’t understand was that she was being equipped with proof of her Catholicism, a hedge against persecution, real or imagined.

It wasn’t until adulthood that she began to comprehend the terrible irony of her mother’s gesture. She knew that her father had spent six years in the Siberian Gulag, surviving nearly on will alone; that her mother’s elder sister, fearless and proud, had married an Italian Fascist whose title and connections helped them to survive during the war. But their faith, their legacy as Jews, was kept hidden for decades.

After Long Silence is a searching inquiry into the meaning of identity, self, and history. It’s about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be left unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets.

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About the Author: Helen Fremont lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She has had fiction and nonfiction published in The Harvard Review, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Marlboro Review, and Ploughshares. After Long Silence is her first book.

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Compiler’s Note: Although not technically adoption-related, I have chosen to include this memoir because the author’s experience very closely resembles that of other children of Holocaust survivors who were, in fact, adopted by non-Jews.

Korean adult adoptees speak out in this anthology. Through memories, reflections, and poetry, adoptees speak to the range of issues that accompany adoption: feelings of belonging and difference, self and other, culture and accommodation, love and loss. We now know that it is in late adolescence and young adulthood that many adoptees move full-tilt into struggling with these issues. These writings offer a wonderful tool to help adoptees move through the process.

From the Dust Jacket: Twenty-nine-year-old Country Western star Hank Williams was already a legend when he was found dead in the backseat of his baby-blue Cadillac on New Year’s Day, 1953. Five days later, a child was born to his sometime mistress, Bobbie Jett, who turned the baby over to Hank’s mother and fled to California.

Antha Belle Jett spent the first two years of her life with her grandmother, Lillian, who renamed her Cathy. When Lillian passed away, Cathy was shuffled through the Alabama foster care system until she was adopted by the Deupree family of Mobile. Cathy Deupree was, for the most part, a happy child, but certain questions nagged at the back of her mind, questions her adoptive parents couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer: Where did that big scar on her right wrist come from? Why were there no baby pictures of her before the age of three? Who were her real parents—why did they give her up?

On her twenty-first birthday, Cathy’s adoptive parents visited her at college and delivered two picces of startling news: First, she was due to collect a two-thousand-dollar inheritance from the estate of Hank Williams’ mother, and next, Hank may have been her biological father, though they said there was no hard evidence to prove this. In fact, there was ample evidence, but an elaborate conspiracy of greed and silence was at work, keeping Cathy in the dark.

In 1984, Keith Adkinson, a handsome, sharp-witted investigative attorney, agreed to help Cathy prove her true paternity. Keith launched a complex battle involving virtually everyone with a stake in Williams’ considerable estate—his son, Hank Williams, Jr., his second wife, his sister, and his music publishers. As Cathy’s lawyer, manager, and later, her mate, Keith invested tremendous skill and perseverance in solving the riddle of Cathy’s identity and helping her become who she is today: Jett Williams, daughter of Bobbie Jett and Hank Williams, whose father’s musical legacy she can now claim as her own.

Ain’t Nothin’ as Sweet as My Baby is a riveting journey through the world of country music, an absorbing exposé of justice—Southern-style—and a heart-warming tale of one woman’s triumph over the betrayal and greed of many. In her own words, and with treasured family photographs and documents, Jett Williams tells the story of her life.

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About the Author: Jett Williams is currently touring the country with her father’s backup band, the Drifting Cowboys. She lives in a houseboat on the Potomac with her husband, Keith Adkinson.

Coauthor Pamela Thomas worked as an editor for twenty years, has contributed to numerous popular magazines, and has written and coauthored several books. She lives in New York City.

In 1961 Paige was put up for adoption, a more taboo and secretive topic than it is today. Paige’s adoptive family chose not to focus on the adoption, but instead function as a regular family with natural children. However, being adopted made her feel vulnerable and unreal. She longed to know more about her true self. In Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity, Paige tells stories from the perspective of a child and adolescent, growing up with a closely guarded secret. Through vignettes, Paige relates feelings about her adoption to forming and maintaining relationships, caring for pets, moving to new houses and neighborhoods, losing loved ones and entering young adulthood. Her need for acceptance is juxtaposed with her adoptive father’s increasingly erratic behavior. This is a tale of family joys and hardships, friendships, falling in love and the need to belong. It is set in the era of free love, social unrest and unexpected change during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

Story of the indigenous Malawian and her adoption by the American couple Lowell and Josephine Edwards.

From the Back Cover: All Born Under The One Blue Sky is a compilation of stories and poems written by Irish people who have been touched in some way by adoption. The writers of this book, which includes birth parents, adopted persons and adoptive parents all have a connection with Cúnamh, an adoption agency. Turning the pages of this book will give you, the reader, an opportunity to experience what adoption has meant to these writers and how it has in some way shaped their lives.

You will be touched by the expression of the heartfelt emotions of the writers, each sharing with honesty, courage and generosity their own deeply personal and unique experience of adoption. You will come away having a greater awareness of the complexities and challenges that adoption brings but, most of all, you will be reminded of the strength of love, the need to belong, and the great lengths people will go to find inner peace.

All Born Under The One Blue Sky has been published to acknowledge Cúnamh’s 100 years in existence.

About the Author: Aleja Bennett was born in East Elmhurst in the New York borough of Queens to a by-her-unknown biological mother. In 1976 she was raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn, NY, by her church-attending adopted parents who still serve as a deacon and deaconess. From the age of two through nineteen they physically, verbally and mentally abused her. She was tortured, starved and neglected all through her childhood. Alcohol became an escape for her while she associated with men who added to her abuse. At the age of twenty-five, while walking into her first A.A. meeting, she wrote her first poem titled “Being Alive.” From there she wrote eight titles: Only the Strong Can Survive, Aleja’s Beautiful Poetic Strategy in Recovery, Poems from the Heart Mind Body and Soul, Passions Desires of Aleja the Poet, Thoughts Deeply Rooted Within Me, Seasons With And Without Love, All I Can Do Is Stand, and, finally, All I can Do Is Stand Part Two. She writes not just to share her story but to empower, strengthen, and encourage people all over the world. Her mission has been to lift up the depressed, broken, wounded, injured, sad, addicts, abuse victims, teens, and adopted children all over the world.

The sequel to All I Can Do is Stand is again an amalgam of hope and courage. This book guides us through the spiritual journey of the author, who shares a piece of her life stories while she teach us a great lesson: It doesn’t matter how hard is your life, or how terrible is the people that attack you when they are supposed to help you, your life depends on your ability to stand. This intense sequel is written with deep emotion and profound sentiment; which the author uses to scream at the world that even though many people has tried to hurt her, she is still alive, and she is still standing.

This book takes you on a life long journey from being adopted by two loving people to the College Football Hall Of Fame. Along the way you will read about all the trials and tribulations of a record setting athlete trying to make life defining decisions plus having to deal with a premature, unexpected, unprepared, career ending injury.

From the Dust Jacket: Shortly after his mother dies of breast cancer when he is ten years old, author Michael Blumenthal discovers a startling fact: His mother was not his biological mother, and his aunt and uncle, immigrant chicken farmers living in Vineland, NJ, are really his parents.

As fate would have it, his father, a German-Jewish refugee raised by a loveless and embittered stepmother after his own mother died in childbirth, has inflicted on his adoptive son a fate uncannily—and terrifyingly—similar to his own: Having first adopted Michael, in part, to help his dying wife, he then imposes on him the same sort of penurious and loveless stepmother whom he had to survive.

With these revelations, the “mysteries” that seem to have permeated Michael’s childhood are laid bare, triggering a quest for belonging that will infiltrate the author’s entire adult life. All My Mothers and Fathers is Michael Blumenthal’s moving and powerful account of how he put his life together, and made both a break from and peace with his past.

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About the Author: Michael Blumenthal is the author of six books of poetry, including Days We Would Rather Know and Against Romance. He has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Paris Review, the New Republic, and Time. The recipient of Pushcart Prizes as well as a Fulbright, a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller/Bellagio, and other prestigious awards, he was the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Harvard for ten years. He currently lives in Marseilles.

From the Publisher: Sliver of Stone magazine presents its first volume of collected nonfiction. From the mouth of a Seattle whale to a Nordstrom’s swimsuit department, from an Idaho fundamentalist church to a fathomless Florida lake, the fifteen stories in All That Glitters recount lives and identities unsettled by impending doom. Also included are four remarkable interviews with award-winning nonfiction writers, including Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin.

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About the Author: Lori Jakiela is the author of a memoir, Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette 2006), and three poetry chapbooks. Her full-length poetry collection, Spot the Terrorist!, will be published in April 2012. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 5 AM and elsewhere. She lives outside of Pittsburgh, directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Chatham University.

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Compiler’s Note: Sliver of Stone is a bi-annual, online literary magazine dedicated to the publication of work from both emerging and established poets, writers, and visual artists from all parts of the globe. See, particularly, “All of Them Would Hurt Someone, I Think” by Lori Jakiela (Originally published in Issue 3).

Along Came a Spider is the autobiographical sequel to A Superior Girl and is the final part of “Web of Deceit.”

“Ann Marie” is a little girl of nineteen months and just pre-speech. She is taken from her mother in one room, led into an adjacent room and handed over to a complete stranger who she is told is her “mummy” and who then takes her home with her. Now add to this a life-time’s insistence by “mummy” that she really is the woman who gave birth to her. Thus was played out a charade connived in by all the adults involved in the child’s life and which remained undiscovered until she was herself fifty years old.

Trapped in this “web of deceit” in which all of the participants behave as if “mummy” really is her mother she soon begins to fear that she is going mad and so, in an effort to hold on to her sanity, regularly brings to mind all the images she can recall from her past. As her new parents (especially her “mother”), attempt to mold her into the new family she outwardly conforms, but inwardly fights their efforts. Eventually there comes a time when she realizes that, in order to hold on to her sanity, she must stop dwelling on where her “pretty lady” (her birth mother) and her sister (personified in a doll) have disappeared to. Thus, by her early teens she reaches a state of mind in which she simultaneously knows in her deep subconscious but does not know in her conscious mind that she must have been adopted.

The effect of living “in two minds” results in dreams and hallucinations which are at times terrifying and yet, such is her fear at exploring what lies behind the black veil in her subconscious mind, she is able to conceal her frequent inner turmoil and appear perfectly normal even to those who know her most closely.

When “Ann Marie” finds her birth mother, “Bella,” two years before her death, Bella is absolutely delighted to think that her story could be the subject of a book (A Superior Girl) and tells Ann Marie her life story—the adoption of her little daughter and the utter heartbreak of parting with her; a heartbreak which continued down the years until her wish to find her again before she died was granted forty-eight years later. All the thoughts and actions attributed to Bella are as she expressed them.

This for me has been an incredible insight into the human mind, made somewhat eerie by the fact that it is my own! I found that truth was indeed far stranger than fiction.

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By the Same Author: A Superior Girl (2011).

From the Dust Jacket: When a loved one dies we mourn our loss. We take comfort in the rituals that mark the passing, and we turn to those around us for support. But what happens when there is no closure, when a family member or a friend who may be still alive is lost to us nonetheless? How, for example, does the mother whose soldier son is missing in action, or the family of an Alzheimer’s patient who is suffering from severe dementia, deal with the uncertainty surrounding this kind of loss?

In this sensitive and lucid account, Pauline Boss explains that, all too often, those confronted with such ambiguous loss fluctuate between hope and hopelessness. Suffered too long, these emotions can deaden feeling and make it impossible for people to move on with their lives. Yet the central message of this book is that they can move on. Drawing on her research and clinical experience, Boss suggests strategies that can cushion the pain and help families come to terms with their grief. Her work features the heartening narratives of those who cope with ambiguous loss and manage to leave their sadness behind, including those who have lost family members to divorce, immigration, adoption, chronic mental illness, and brain injury. With its message of hope, this eloquent book offers guidance and understanding to those struggling to regain their lives.

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About the Author: Pauline Boss is Professor of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, past President of the National Council on Family Relations, and a psychotherapist in private practice.

From Midwest Book Review: In the spring of 1915, Samuel Nakasian’s father and one million other Armenian men were taken from their homes by Turkish policemen, escorted out into the desert, and murdered. That infamous Armenian genocide meant that young Sam, his two siblings, and his mother emigrated to America. The strain on his mother created a nervous breakdown compelling her to place her three children in private orphanages. She then entered a hospital where she died a few years later. Sam is a ward of the Children’s Aid Society and placed at the Brace Farm School. He speaks no English. He knows no one. Thus begins the American experience of Sam Nakasian, a life so interesting and rich as to be a dramatic example of the role immigrants play in the molding of our great nation. Nakasian manages, through determination and desire, to rise above the overwhelming odds against him to build a wonderful, productive life as one of America’s “adopted sons.” America’s Adopted Son is wonderful autobiographical reading, and a welcome addition to today’s national dialogue over the issues and controversies of immigration.

From the Dust Jacket: This is the story of Jon and Michael Galluccio, two gay men living in New Jersey, who become foster parents to Adam, a premature baby born with the AIDS virus and addicted to crack, heroin, marijuana, and alcohol. While nursing Adam through the many medical emergencies of his first year and surviving the daily dramas that all new parents go through, they realize that this child, their son, could be taken back from them at any time by the state, and they decide to try to legally adopt him together. Refused by the state—even as it asks them to care for another at-risk infant—they decide to fight for their son in the courts, and win, setting a precedent for all unmarried couples in New Jersey.

Soon Adam has a younger sister, Madison, and eventually Madison’s half-sister, a teenager named Rosa, who has lived most of her life in a group home, joins the Galluccio family. And in the midst of all this, Jon, himself an adopted child, decides to embark on a search for his own birth mother.

This heartwarming story shows that the American family is vibrantly alive and extending itself in remarkable new directions.

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About the Author: Jon and Michael Galluccio live in Paterson, New Jersey, with their three children, Adam, Madison, and Rosa. Their story has been widely followed in the press, with reports in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and NBC and CBS News.

David Groff is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Men on Men 2 and Men on Men 2000 fiction anthologies, as well as in Out magazine, Poetry, New York magazine, POZ, and other periodicals. He is the editor of Out Facts and Whitman’s Men, and co-author with the late Robin Hardy of The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood. He lives in New York City.

From the Author: This book is a painfully honest account of my experience as an adoptee in a family where my adoptive parents already had their own child. I learned about my adoption in a playground argument when I was seven. From then on I felt desperately insecure—unless I was good all the time I knew I could be taken away. My upbringing was intensely unhappy: mentally and physically abusive. I felt I had no control over my own life, that I could never “get it right” with the family whose love and approval I needed so much. At times I resorted to self harm. The rejection I felt left me emotionally scarred and in need of therapy. I searched for and was eventually reunited with my natural mother in the USA. I hoped to find someone who could love me for myself and with whom I could have a balanced adult relationship. I was totally unprepared for what happened.

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About the Author: Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of traveling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.

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By the Same Author: A Mind to Be Free (2005) and A Life Worth Living (2006); all three books have also been published in a single volume as From the Prison of My Mind (2007), which was reissued as Letting Go in 2013 by CreateSpace.

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Compiler’s Note: The edition issued under the auspices of the self-publishing platform, CreateSpace, was published under the name Polly Fielding.

From the Back Cover: This is the remarkable story of Angela, and written especially for those who are either adopted, have adopted a child or ministers to those who have been adopted. It is a story born out of heartache and ends with restoration and healing. Angela was born in 1941 to an unmarried mother and given up for adoption shortly after her birth. The adoptive home had all the trappings of wealth and care, but love, nurture and a father in the home were the missing ingredients.

The story is of Angela’s life, school, college, marriage, and then searching for and finding her biological mother when in her late forties. This was a profound milestone, and brought with it blood relatives, an extraordinary family history and genealogy, and the beginnings of an understanding of what it meant to be accepted and to belong.

The book tells how Angela became a Christian and subsequently joined the team at Ellel Ministries in Scotland, a worldwide healing and discipleship ministry. This move was pivotal as she completed the training programme for learning how to minister to people, and also received ministry for herself. The journey towards healing was not easy or speedy but was transformational, providing insight into the vital principals of true inner healing.

From the Dust Jacket: Rita Mae Brown’s earliest memory is of the soothing purr of Mickey, her family’s long-haired tiger cat, who curled up and claimed a spot in her crib. From there, a steady parade of cats, dogs, horses, and all manner of two- and four-legged critters have walked, galloped, and flown into and through her world. In Animal Magnetism, the bestselling author shares the lessons she’s learned from these marvelous creatures as well as her deep appreciation for them.

Brown readily admits that she prefers the company of animals to people, a trait handed down from her mother. After all, Brown explains, “There’s no such thing as a dumb dog, but God knows there are continents filled with dumb humans.” In fact, by observing the dogs on her farm, the horses in her stables, and the cats that have helped her flesh out her many novels, Brown has gained better insight into herself and other human beings one need only look at a chicken coop, she once realized, to see its striking similarity to her mother’s clucking and preening group of friends.

In hilarious and heartwarming stories, Brown introduces us to Franklin, a parrot with a wicked sense of humor; R.C., a courageous Doberman who defined loyalty and sacrifice; Suzie Q,, the horse who taught her the meaning of hard work; Baby Jesus, a tough tiger cat from New York City with sharp teeth to match his attitude; and of course the beloved and prolific Sneaky Pie, who needs no introduction to her legions of fans. In her succinct and personable style, Brown also revisits the very human parts of her life growing up in the segregated South, dealing with the pain and the loss of those dearest to her, and coming into her own as an adult and as a writer.

Every recollection here reveals nature’s delight and wonder and offers solid evidence of the ability of animals to love. As funny as it is poignant, Animal Magnetism shows how these inspiring creatures, great and small, can bring out the best in us, restore us to our greater selves, and even save our lives.

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About the Author: Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sister Jane novels—Outfoxed, Hotspur, Full Cry, The Hunt Ball, The Hounds and the Fury, The Tell-Tale Horse, and Hounded to Death—as well as the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries and Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, and The Sand Castle, among many others. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.

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By the Same Author: Rubyfruit Jungle (1973, Daughters, Inc.); Six of One (1978, Harper & Row); Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers’ Manual (1988, Bantam Books); Bingo (1988, Bantam Books); Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser (1997, Bantam Books); Loose Lips (1999, Bantam Books); The Sand Castle (2008, Grove Press); A Nose for Justice (2010, Ballantine Books); Murder Unleashed (2012, Ballantine Books); and Cakewalk (2016, Bantam Books), among many, many others.

From the Dust Jacket: Here, at last, is the superb companion to the two million-copy bestseller Mister God, This ls Anna. In Anna, Mister God, and the Black Knight Anna once again works her charm as she takes readers through the joyful adventures of her life. Brilliantly complemented by beautiful black-and-white illustrations by Papas, Fynn’s magic continues to delight and enchant readers with the small miracle that is Anna.

When Anna first appeared in 1974 in Mister God, This Is Anna, she took the world by storm. This little waif from London’s East End charmed critics and readers alike with her irresistible capacity for friendship and love and her astonishing dialogue with “Mister God.” Now Anna is back with the same friends: Fynn, Mum, Millie, and of course, Mister God. Through Fynn she meets new friends, among them, Old John D., the Black Knight, Fynn’s agnostic, rationalist former schoolmaster, who finds himself intrigued and quietly moved by Anna’s innocent and eccentric wisdom. Anna’s astonishing capacity for looking at the world from Mister God’s point of view leaves them in a constant state of bemused fascination. Through her, both Fynn and Old John D. discover the meaning of love.

Anna is, indeed, a pearl of great price. As in Fynn’s previous books, every page of Anna, Mister God, and the Black Knight bursts with her childlike and yet strangely wise views on life and faith. As we look at the world through Anna’s eyes we are able to recapture that special logic of childhood innocence and clarity that strikes so near to the truth. Anna, Mister God, and the Black Knight will capture the hearts and minds of readers with the timeless qualities of humanity, wisdom, and love of life that it conveys.

In addition to Mister God This is Anna, and Anna, Mister God, and the Black Knight, Fynn is also the author of Anna’s Book, a collection of treasured fragments of Anna’s writings.

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By the Same Author: Mister God, This Is Anna (1974, Collins), among others.

From the Publisher: The author follows a paper trail from her birthplace in Bolton, England, her voyage to America and a collection of newspaper headlines from June 1933 until February 21, 1934, about Nancy Yates Wilson, known as “the baby slapper” aka Annie Yates.

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About the Author: Patricia Ann Stockdale grew up in Mississippi, attending school in Greenville and college in Mississippi and California. She is a researcher in genealogy for over 25 years and a literary agent for the past 10 years. Her love of history has taken her on an incredible journey throughout her life; not only in search of her ancestral roots, but for others interested in tracing their family roots. She is retired and lives in southern California.

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Compiler’s Note: This book appears to have been re-issued twice since its initial publication as supplemented editions; the first time a matter of days later, in July, 2010, denominated as Annie II; and in May 2012, denominated as Annie Yates.

The Answer is No! Abuse, neglect, abandonment, rejection, adoption, foster homes, orphanages. Is this really life at its best? What is the question? It may be easy to give money at church, or to your favorite charity, but what does the older child really need? Read what happens when a four-year-old orphan is adopted. Open your heart and get ready to laugh and cry as this story unfolds. This book allows readers to understand that “Yes,” you too, can make a difference. About the Author: At the age of four, B. Matthew Bingham was adopted and this book is about his life experiences both before, and after his adoption took place. He is currently on the board of directors of an international adoption agency. Bart gives talks on adoption/international adoption to various groups. He lives with his wife and two adopted children at home in Elwood, IN.

Are You Averill? is a moving account of the search by an adopted child for her birth-parents. At almost sixty, her adoptive parents now dead, Margaret has a strong desire to find out about her origins. Information available on the Internet allows her to trace her birth-mother. After their emotional first meeting where she learns she has half-brothers, mother and daughter wish to continue their association. Margaret learns her birth-father was a Polish airman during the Second World War. Although vowing not to trace him Margaret is overcome by curiosity and so begins the search for her father which leads to the discovery of siblings in America. We all have a desire to know who we are, where we come from. Not all searches into the past are successful but this heart-warming tale of joy and tragedy told with warmth and humour will spur anyone wanting to make that journey for themselves.

Two sisters passed around from family to family as toddlers, handled their situation in dramatically different ways. The older sister internalized the abandonment and rejection, while the younger sister eagerly embraced each new mother figure asking, “Are you my mommy?” Thirty years after being adopted into a Forever Family, these sisters seek out their past. In the search to reconnect with their biological family, they easily locate and reunite with their birth father. Through this reunion, they start to learn of the difficult life their birth mother had lived, and might still be living. Several clues point to Native American Heritage through their birth mother’s family line. While intense curiosity drives them to know more of their ancestry, their desire to reunite with her is diminished by an uncertainty over whether she wants to be found or if she would rather leave the past behind her where she buried it over 30 years ago. They seek answers to these questions:
• Is their birth mother alive?
• How will the answer to this question affect them?
• If found alive, will she accept or reject them?
• What secrets has she been guarding all these years?
• Does she hold the keys to connect them to their tribal ancestry?
• What will it take to heal the wounds for both mother and daughters?
The tale stretches beyond the exhaustive search for their mother, delving into complicated family relationships, spirituality, healing, and forgiveness.

From the Back Cover: When Eileen Munro’s mother became pregnant at 16, she was told to give her baby away to a “good family,” but the couple who paid the fee at the Salvation Army mother-and-baby home in Glasgow in 1963 turned out to be alcoholics who neglected and physically abused Eileen. Then, when their marriage broke down, they failed to protect her from sexual abuse at the hands of a family friend.

After watching her adoptive mother drown on inhaled vomit, Eileen and her younger sister were taken into care, but her nightmare was to continue as she was subjected to further physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

At the age of only sixteen, over seven months into a secret pregnancy, she decided that the only way out was through a bottle of painkillers; when she survived and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, he became her lifeline.

Taken from her Native birth mother as a baby. Removed from her adoptive parents’ home at 5 and caught shoplifting at 11. On the streets prostituting herself at 14. This is the stark childhood and adolescence of Tara Lee, the protagonist of As I Remember It. But she triumphs over rejection and abuse, thanks to her indomitable spirit and the efforts of a pair of unique foster parents. Breakdowns in the fostering system make the headlines, but what is day-to-day life really like for foster children and teens? What struggles do they face, and what resources do they draw on? Why are kids in care more liable to get involved in crime? As I Remember It yields first-person insight into these issues, but beyond that, it will draw you in with its unblinking portrait of a young girl who discovers that she possesses a core of strength equal to that of her storybook heroines.

From the Back Cover:  EVERYONE WHO LIVED IN THE QUIET HOUSTON SUBURB THOUGHT THE COULSONS WERE THE PICTURE OF HAPPINESS AND HARMONY. 

 FEW WOULD GUESS THE HORRIFYING TRUTH... 

For years, Mary Coulson suspected there was something terribly wrong with her 24-year-old adopted son, Bobby. Only her loving husband knew of her fears—fears Mary herself put down as irrational and foolish. Because she loved her son, and would go on loving him until the day she died...

On a November afternoon in 1992, Bobby finally exploded. Before that black day was done, his brother-in-law, two sisters and father would be dead—tragic victims of his merciless rage. Mary Coulson paid for her unwavering devotion by being his first. Bobby bound and gagged her before setting her on fire. The last thing Mary ever saw was her son’s viciously grinning face.

When Bobby Coulson was arrested for the crimes—at his family’s funeral—everyone believed he’d done it for his parents’ $600,000 estate. But his actual motives were deeper and darker than anyone imagined. Including Mary Coulson’s own shocking diary, as well as intimate interviews with family members and friends, Ashes to Ashes is a gripping story of a mother whose love wasn’t enough to save her son ... or herself.

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About the Author: Lyn Riddle began her journalism career at the Rock Springs Daily Rocket Miner in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a rough-and-tumble place that lured thousands of workers to build a huge coal-fired generating plant by day and wreak havoc by night. Political corruption came next. A reporter’s paradise.

She worked cityside for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner with a cigar-smoking city editor in a rumpled shirt, gray pants and a clip-on tie who demanded precision in reporting and classy writing. Jobs as a staff writer and an editor on the city desk and state desk of the Greenville Piedmont and The Greenville News in South Carolina came next. Fifteen years of freelance writing followed for publications such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and Readers Digest.

Wanting to write stories that would make a difference in town she lived in, she went back to The Greenville News as projects editor then city editor.

She worked as editor of the Greenville Journal, started papers in Anderson and Spartanburg in South Carolina and developed a newspaper website journalwatchdog.com.

She is the author of four non-fiction books and teaches journalism at Furman University and Converse College. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Converse College.

From the Back Cover: The nine essays in Asian North American Identities investigate how Asian North American subjects have undergone significant transformations in recent years. The authors explore the alternative and inventive ways in which Asian North Americans imagine, articulate, and represent themselves as subjects in a wide variety of cultural forms, including novels, art, photography, poetry, and film. Moving beyond the dichotomies of the Old World and the New, and the East and the West, the volume draws on models of ethnic identity that reflect the heterogeneity and transnationality of Asian North Americans. The essays examine alliances and differences among Asian North Americans, and their relation to other ethnic groups; study ways in which writers experiment with form in order to interrogate the process of self-representation; and look at strategies used to escape the identities imposed on them by history, the media, high and low culture, and political and legal discourses.

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About the Author: Eleanor Ty is Professor of English at Whitfield Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

Donald C. Goellnicht is Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at McMaster University.

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Chapter 5: “Asian America Is in the Heartland: Performing Korean Adoptee Experience” by Josephine Lee (pp. 102-116).

From the Dust Jacket: Despite his talent for self-promotion, the character of the emperor Augustus is rarely revealed. Portraits of him abound, most of them contemporary, but in all these portraits he is portrayed as perpetually young and vigorous, never allowed to age even when he reached his seventies. The real person was deliberately veiled, screened from public scrutiny by an orchestrated façade that was not necessarily false, but which was tailored to circumstances and adapted accordingly when circumstances changed.

This biography of Augustus is unique in its presentation .of Augustus the man. Pat Southern traces the life, works and times of the emperor chronologically, presenting ideology and events as they occurred from Augustus’ point of view, including his transition from heir and successor of Julius Caesar to head of the new Principate and his development of the Roman Empire.

Pat Southern’s biography provides a compelling depiction of an extraordinary man, who was the guiding light in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

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About the Author: Pat Southern studied archaeology and ancient history at the Universities of London and Newcastle Upon Tyne. She is the co-author with Karen R. Dixon of The Roman Cavalry (1992) and The Late Roman Army (1996) and the author of Domitian: Tragic Tyrant (1997).