Tag: Adoption
Baby Girl
By Bette Lee Crosby
Blurb
When young Cheryl Ann leaves home, she thinks her path is straight…until she’s forced to make a choice she could never have imagined. The man in her life makes it clear: either pick your baby or pick me, he says. Suddenly, Cheryl finds herself at a crossroads. She makes a decision that will change her life forever, and that decision causes a chain of events that will lead Cheryl to a completely unexpected place.
Baby Girl is a mother’s story. It’s about the greatest sacrifice a mother can make when she wants only the best for her child. It’s about falling in and out of love, of losing and finding one’s self. It’s about the perilous journey from passionate young love to happy true love and understanding the differences between the two.
Baby Girl is a book that readers won’t want to miss because it’s a story they won’t forget.
From the Author
This book is based on a true story…a story that is heartbreaking at times but will leave readers with a better understanding of what a woman will do to protect her child. When I first heard this birth mother’s story I was touched by it, so much so that I needed to know more. When I knew more, I knew I needed to write my novel. The result is Baby Girl.
My Review
Baby Girl is Cheryl Ann’s story about growing up with a mother who seemed incapable of loving anyone, even her daughter and husband. When her father died, Cheryl Ann became more lonely than ever. Then things changed when Ryan Carter moved into her neighborhood. Though still in her teens she and Ryan set out on their own, and complications in their relationship set in when Cheryl Ann became pregnant. Ryan did not want a baby, and Cheryl Ann was put in a situation of choosing Ryan or the baby she was expecting.
At times, this was a difficult read because Cheryl Ann was emotionally abused causing her to make decisions she didn’t want to make. Eventually, she finds the strength to move out and on, but her troubles didn’t end. The author created a complex character in Cheryl Ann. She was weak and easily led, but adversity is an unyielding teacher, and Cheryl Ann found her strength and determination to make a good life for herself and her children.
Reading this book, you will laugh, and you will cry. You will be angry, and yet be overjoyed. It is a heartwarming novel based on a real person’s story – her growth, her weakness, and her strengths and resolve. This is a book you don’t want to miss.
Baby Girl is the fourth book in the Memory House series. I have read all of them and you can find my review of Book 1 Memory House, Book 2 The Loft, and Book 3 What the Heart Remembers by clicking on the title of each book. It is not necessary to read them in order, but some of the characters are presented in the previous books, and, therefore, enhances your reading and enjoyment if read in order.
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
To find out more about Bette Lee Crosby, please go to her webpage or read about her on one of my previous links listed above.
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Secrets, Spies, and Spotted Dogs
By Jane Eales
Book Blurb
Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs is a true story about the author’s adoption and her quest for truth and identity. Told about her adoption at age 19, she was sworn to secrecy and forbidden to search for her biological family.
Decades later, a heart-wrenching family crisis and a longing to know about her origins and why she was adopted drive Jane to painstakingly research her roots in Harare (then Salisbury), Johannesburg, London, Berlin and Sydney.
Eventually she is warmly welcomed by her biological mother’s family in London and is astonished to learn that her mother was an attractive mysterious and charming woman – and a spy for the Allies during WWII.
The Imitation Game, and Foyle’s War set the atmosphere perfectly. Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs interweaves the author’s poignant search for truth abut her identity with the heart-pounding threads of WWII espionage at Arnhem in the Netherlands just prior to the ‘Market Garden’ airborne campaign.
Sample Chapter
CHAPTER ONE
The letter
The letter arrived in a drab brown, envelope stamped ‘official’. It was October 1966. I was nineteen, and had been living in Johannesburg for a year. I was staying in the YWCA, a centrally-located, purpose-built modern hostel for women. My room was on the fifth floor with a pleasant outlook over the city. Mum and Dad (Elizabeth and Benjamin) lived in Salisbury (now called Harare) in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) and a year earlier, they had encouraged me to move to Johannesburg, and had also supported the choice of the YWCA as a place where I could live. Some years before this, James, my brother, who was seven years my elder, had moved to Australia.
It was standard practice for the South African Department of Immigration to contact new settlers at the end of their first year to see if they were planning to stay permanently in South Africa and if so, to invite them to complete an application for permanent residency. My letter contained an application form.
It seemed fairly straightforward; however, I needed my birth certificate. I looked for it in the document file in my cupboard, but it wasn’t there. Where could it be?
Then I remembered, Mum and Dad had done all the paperwork for my passport application a few years earlier, so maybe they still had it. In my next weekly letter home, I asked Mum and Dad to post my birth certificate to me. They probably kept it with my other personal documents in their safe at home in Rhodesia. With that done, I put it out of my mind.
After supper on the very next Sunday night, I was sitting on the edge of my bed in my hostel room choosing clothes to wear for the week ahead. The curtains were half open and the city lights twinkled Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs in the dark of the night. It had been a sociable weekend – with a great party the previous evening filled with new friends, guitar playing, and folk singing.
‘Jane, room fifty-two, please take a phone call in the lobby!’
The intercom announcement boomed into the bedrooms of all seventy residents. I had never had a phone call during my stay at the hostel, so generally took no notice of these broadcasts. There was a brief pause and the proclamation rang out again, and this time the voice was more insistent. I suddenly realised the announcement was for me! How embarrassing. I jumped up, pressed the intercom button, acknowledged the message, and dashed downstairs.
Who was it? Who would be phoning me?
This was long before the days of mobile phones, and at that time in Johannesburg, there was a long wait to get a phone connected at home. We were fortunate as the hostel had two public telephones in the lobby. No privacy though! The motherly concierge, as well as any residents with their guests, could hear every conversation. This did not bother me, as I was not planning to have any personal conversations. But who could be phoning?
‘Hello. Good evening,’ I said in my most confident voice.
‘Hello, Jane. It is Dad. How are you?’ Of course as soon as I heard his heavy German accented voice, I knew it was Dad. But why was he phoning me? What was the urgency?
‘Fine – thank you, Dad. How are you? How is Mum?’
Dad, characteristically, came straight to the point.
‘We are all right, Jane. Thank you for asking. We received your letter.’
Oh, yes. I remembered now.
Dad continued in the tone I knew so well that meant, ‘Do not question me; let me finish what I want to say, then please follow my instructions!’ Perhaps he was aware of where I was and that there was no privacy.
‘Jane, I won’t beat about the bush. I will say immediately why I am phoning you. Mum and I want you to fly home for the weekend next Saturday. It will be nice for you to visit and we can give you the documents you ask for.
Fly home, for just a weekend! I liked the idea of going home. It was quite a few months since they had visited me in Johannesburg. But, why did they want me home suddenly, at such short notice? Why fly all that way for only a twenty-four hour visit? This would be my first trip home since Christmas the year before.
Feeling apprehensive, I knew Dad did not want me to question anything over the phone.
‘Okay, Dad. That’s fine,’ I said.
He continued. ‘I’ll book the flight and organise for the ticket to reach you before you leave. Take a taxi to the airport on Saturday morning and I will pay. I will meet you at the airport.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said. After asking Dad to give Mum my love, we rang off.
Wow! How exciting! The pleasure of looking forward to flying to Salisbury diminished any doubts or uncertainties about why I had been called home so suddenly. Life at nineteen was exhilarating and I felt as if nothing could go wrong.
There was little that could have prepared me for what was to follow.
About the Author
Jane Eales was born in London and adopted into a family with a German refugee father, a British mother and a seven year old son.
She grew up in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) met Rob in Johannesburg South Africa and married in Oxford, England. They returned to South Africa and there she went to university. In 1980 the family moved to Sydney Australia. Not long after this, the eldest of their three children was diagnosed with a disability. His health deteriorated markedly and in part to clarify the genes she had inherited, in 1990 Jane began to search for her biological family.
In 2005 she met her half-brother for the first time at Canary Wharf in London. She was welcomed warmly into his family, now her family.
Overwhelmed with family stories, and as a way of making sense of everything, she began to write. As layers upon layers of her family history emerged, she was often asked ‘why don’t you write a book?’ Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs is the result. This is her first book.
Jane and her husband continue to live in Sydney with their children, grandchildren and friends.
Learn More About the Author
Author – Jane Rosalie Eales (Middle Harbour Press Pty Ltd)
Format – Print book and e-book.
Publisher – Middle Harbour Press Pty Ltd.
Pub Date – 2014, reprinted 2015
Page Count – 292
Genre – Memoir
Award – Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs was a Winner in the autobiography/biography category of the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Award Program. It is the largest not-for-profit award program open to independently published authors worldwide.
Title – Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs Subtitle: Unravelling mysterious family connections behind a secret adoption
Buy the Book
My Review
Family secrets? Every family has them. What is it like to find out at age nineteen, that your parents are not your birth parents, and what’s more, that you have been sworn to secrecy? Furthermore, your parents demand that you never search for your birth parents. This is the story behind Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs.
This is Jane Eales own story. The author carefully researched her book, and in writing it, shared the shame and isolation she felt not being able to discuss her adoption with her friends. It is a chronicle of her painstaking search for her birth parents.
Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs is a well written, easy to read memoir that anyone can enjoy, but that would be of great interest to those who have been adopted and to their birth and adopting families.
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Michelle Clements James ©
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Ignoring Gravity by Sandra Danby
Rose and Lily are sisters. Rose has always looked after her younger sister, and as an adult she feels responsible for Lily’s happiness. Lily is married and has always wanted a baby, but is unable to conceive. Her husband is disinterested and tells her to start working on it. Meanwhile, Rose is given a new assignment to report on early menopause. She soon starts wondering if this might be Lily’s problem.
After their mother’s death, the sisters sort through her belongings and boxes in the attic to spare their bereaved father the sad task. While going through a box Rose discovers that, unbeknownst to the family, their mother kept diaries. While flipping through them, Rose learns that she is adopted. She is crushed. Her life is turned topsy-turvy as she questions who she is, who her birth parents are, why she was never told. She feels as though she is on the outside of her family and is unsure if she truly belongs and whether or not Lily is her sister. Why did her parents lie to her all these years? Using the investigative skills she honed as a journalist, Rose sets out to discover her true identity.
One thing leads to another, and Rose and Lily have more issues to settle, but I will leave that to you to determine.
There is a lot going on in Ignoring Gravity to keep the reader’s attention. Character development is excellent with highly believable characters. The writing is superb, very smooth, and holds your attention throughout the book.
Did I like Ignoring Gravity? I loved it! I recommend it to everyone who enjoys an excellent book.
I received this book from the author for an honest review and received no monetary compensation.
The following information was provided by the author.
Author: Sandra Danby
Publisher: BNBS Books
Book title: Ignoring Gravity
Publication date: September 2014 [prov]
Genre: women’s fiction
Author’s website: http://www.sandradanby.com/
Publisher’s website:http://www.britainsnextbestseller.co.uk/
Book summary: Rose Haldane is confident about her identity. She pulls the same face as her grandfather when she has to do something she doesn’t want to, she knows her DNA is the same as his. Except it isn’t: because Rose is adopted and doesn’t know it. Ignoring Gravity connects two pairs of sisters separated by a generation of secrets. Finding her mother’s lost diaries, Rose begins to understand why she has always seemed the outsider in her family, why she feels so different from her sister Lily. Then just when she thinks there can’t be any more secrets…
To pre-order Ignoring Gravity, please click here.
Author bio: Since she can first remember, Sandra Danby has loved reading. Hardback, paperback, e-book, new or pre-loved, borrowed from the library and friends, magazines and newspapers, she reads them all. She grew up on a small dairy farm at the bleak edge of East Yorkshire where England meets the North Sea. At the age of four she was making magazines full of her own stories. When missed by her mother, she was usually found in a corner with her nose in a book. She devoured everything from the Famous Five and Secret Seven to Swallows and Amazons, from Little Women to George Orwell and Mary Stewart. All this reading led her first to a degree in English Literature in London, then to journalism. Now she writes fiction full-time… and still reads at every spare moment.
The next book: Sandra is now writing Connectedness, the sequel in which Rose Haldane travels from Yorkshire to Malaga, Spain, in pursuit of the birth child of controversial artist Justine tree.
Watch Sandra Danby talk about Ignoring Gravity click You Tube.
Watch the book trailer for Ignoring Gravity click You Tube.
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Twitter @SandraDanby
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The Rooms are Filled by Jessica Null Vealitzek
Michael is the adopted son of John and Anne Nygaard and loves his life on his parents’ Minnesota farm. Then one day, the unthinkable happened. Michael’s dad collapses and dies and Michael’s mother has no choice but to sell the farm and move to Ackermann, Illinois where a job at her brother’s restaurant is waiting for her.
When they arrive in Ackermann, Michael has a difficult time making friends – he is the new kid, and the target of the 4th grade bully. He is befriended by another loner. Tina is in 6th grade and goes to the junior high. She lives across the street from Michael, and they become close friends, even though her moodiness bothers Michael. He doesn’t understand why she is nice to him one minute, and mean the next.
Michael’s teacher Julia Parnell has observed the bullying, but is powerless to do anything because there is no school policy against it. She befriends Michael, and they form a close friendship. When Anne is asked to work Saturday’s, she asks Julia if Michael could stay with her during her shift.
Michael is drowning in his grief but can’t talk to his mother about it because he doesn’t want to make her sad. He misses his dad tremendously and dreams of talking with him. His life was so much simpler with his dad, the farm, his chores, and his friends. Would his life here ever feel the same? Would he ever be accepted? When each child had to tell something interesting about his life, Michael revealed that he was adopted. The other students treated him meanly, and he was even more ostracized.
No one knows Julia is running from her past, but when it catches up with her, will it affect her job, her relationship with Michael and her other students? Julia has been best friends with Rose since they were young girls. A towns person knew someone from Julia’s past, and before long, rumors were spreading. Her lesson plans had the word Homo written in bold black letters on them. It was hard enough to figure out who she was without others’ bigotries getting in the way.
There is a lot going on in this book, and a lot of prejudice and resentment. Will each character be able to solve their personal conflicts?
I loved THE ROOMS ARE FILLED. It is a quick read, but a complex storyline. I fell in love with the characters of Michael and Julia and was rooting for them all the way. Jessica Null Vealitzek writes with enthusiasm and passion. She has woven the lives and problems of various characters into an intensely captivating tale. I highly recommend this book.
Learn more about Jessica:
Author Page Jessica Null Vealitzek
Blog True Stories
To buy her book on Amazon THE ROOMS ARE FILLED
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