by Mary Ellen Gambutti (Author)
Travel across the years in this inspiring and lyrical collage memoir. In post-WWII South Carolina, chance and choice connected a childless Air Force couple with an abandoned baby girl. Seventy years later, she has framed a deeply personal narrative of vignettes and poetic prose with old and new correspondence, reflections on maternal severance, the injustice of sealed birth records, and the ills of adoption secrecy.
She has documented her military family transfers and separations from early childhood through the Cold War Era and the turbulent 1960s. The encultured discipline and secrecy of her father's Intelligence rank; his parental code of threat, punishment, and expected gratitude for the privilege of adoption, heightened the sensitive adoptee's vigilance and identity confusion.
At forty, her need to know her true origins surfaced. With help from adoptee advocates, she launched the search for her natural mother. DNA testing set her on a parallel journey of self-discovery decades later, and she began to reconcile her adopted life, the meaning of heritage, and the wealth of family.
This 2nd edition features a new cover, Epilogue, and About the Author, and an updated Notes, Books, Resources, and expanded photo Gallery in the e-book, with a link to the Gallery in the paperback.