Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

May 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2008. Originally published 1949. 232 pgs. Purchased. In 1940, as the Nazis were marching onto to Paris, an English solider named Hilary Wainwright was forced to abandon his wife and newborn son. His wife, Lisa, was too ill from childbirth for a hasty evacuation back to England; his son, John, seemingly better off in the care of his mother and her friends than a single father. In 1942, the British War Office notified Hilary of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Adoption, Europe, Fiction, France, Persephone Books • Tags: Marghanita Laski

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

February 14, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Penguin Press, 2017. 338 pgs. Purchased. In the master plan community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, conformity is key. Mia Warren – an artist and single mother – arrives with her teenage daughter, Pearl, on the promise that she will stay in one place until Pearl graduates. In order to enroll her daughter in Shaker Heights’ award-winning school district, Mia rents the top floor of a duplex from Elena Richardson and takes a part-time job at a local […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Adoption, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Celeste Ng

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

April 2, 2017 by Christina

Fiction – print. Ecco, 2017. 336 pgs. Borrowed from a friend. Eighteen-year-old Isabelle Poole graduates from high school with perfect grades and a baby on the way. Her job as a pig roaster at the local BBQ joint doesn’t pay enough for her to raise the baby on her own, and the father of her baby — her high school art teacher — has checked himself into a mental hospital. Yet Izzy is determined to keep her baby — so determined […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Adoption, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Kevin Wilson

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

January 8, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harper Perennial, 2003. Originally published 1993. Print. 354 pgs. Purchased. Three years after the events of The Bean Trees, young Turtle and her adoptive mother Taylor (formerly known as Marietta) are on their way home from visiting the Hoover Dam when Turtle announces she saw someone go over the ledge of the dam. A little girl of few words, it takes Taylor some time to pull all the necessary information from Turtle. But she believes her daughter is telling the truth […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Adoption, Fiction, Indigenious Peoples, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

November 5, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – print. Harper, 1998. Originally published 1988. 272 pgs. Library copy. Twenty-three year old Marietta buys a used car and sets her sights west leaving behind her small town in Kentucky and the single mother who raised her. Rechristening herself as Taylor Greer, Marietta has no plan as to where she’s headed or what she plans to do for money. All she knows is that a young woman in the 1980s named Taylor wouldn’t allow herself to be tied […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Adoption, Book Club, Fiction, Indigenious Peoples, North America, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

Pro by Katha Pollitt

November 21, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Picador, 2014. 272 pgs. Library copy. When I was fourteen, I told a classmate that I was pro-choice as we worked on a group project for our English class at her house. She and, most especially, her older brother began taunting me, calling me a “baby killer”, and saying I was going to hell. I was so shaken and so upset that I asked her mother, who gave me a hug yet said nothing to her children, […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Adoption, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Katha Pollitt

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

November 15, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. William Morrow, 2013. 294 pgs. Library copy. Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer hides behind her gothic persona refusing to grow close to anyone at her newest foster home other than her boyfriend and counting down the days until she can age out of foster care. Molly is sentenced to fifty hours of community service after she is caught stealing a tattered copy of Jane Eyre from the public library and, thanks to her boyfriend’s interference, spends the time helping […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Adoption, Book Club, Fiction, New England, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Christina Baker Kline

The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce

November 12, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. PublicAffairs, 2013. 352 pgs. Library copy. Entangled in the political juggernaut of reproductive rights, adoption is championed as a “win-win” compromise to a woman’s right to choice — abortion opponents “win” as the woman has not had an abortion, pregnant women “win” because they do not have to raise the fetus in question, and couples struggling with infertility “win” because they can finally become parents. Yet adoption is also entangled with serious moral and ethical dilemmas — as suggested […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Adoption, Africa, Asia, Europe, Nonfiction, North America, South America, United States • Tags: Kathryn Joyce

Message From an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran

October 24, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman. Chatto & Windus, 2010. 212 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “Stories of Love and Loss”, Xinran’s book includes ten chapters each one dedicated to the story of Chinese mothers who have lost their daughters through infanticide, theft, and abandonment or have spent their lives caring for the thousands of orphans in China. Xinran explains how and why these women made the decision to end their daughters’ lives or abandoned them as […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Adoption, Asia, China, Chinese, Nonfiction, Translated • Tags: Xinran

Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison

May 28, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2003. 242 pgs. PaperBackSwap. For more than a decade, Kathy Harrison has sheltered a shifting cast of troubled youngsters — the offspring of prostitutes and addicts; the sons and daughters of abusers. She and her husband are devoted foster parents listed on the emergency hotline meaning they are willing to take a child into to their home day or night, vacation or workday, but Harrison serves on the front lines – the stay-at-home parent who […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Adoption, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Kathy Harrison

The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler (Reread)

January 4, 2013 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Penguin, 2007. 368 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade”, Fessler offers women who “went away” to maternity homes, to live with relatives, or were hidden in their own homes and then were forced under enormous family and social pressure to place their children up for adoption the space to finally tell their stories. Some of these women’s experiences are spliced and used […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Adoption, Nonfiction, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Ann Fessler

The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler

February 3, 2008 by Christina

In the years after World War II birth control was tightly restricted; abortion was still illegal in most states, and was prohibitively expensive or life endangering. At the same time, the postwar economic boom brought millions of families into the middle class, along with intense social pressures to conform to a model of family perfection. While young men who engaged in sex often saw their reputations enhanced, single women who became pregnancy were shunned by family and friends, evicted from […]

Categories: 2008 Reads, Adoption, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Ann Fessler