Book: Paperback | 8.26 x 5.23in | 368 pages | ISBN 9780143038979 | 26 Jun 2007 | Penguin | 18 - AND UP
In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.
The Girls Who Went Away1. My Own Story as an Adoptee 2. Breaking the Silence
Dorothy II
Annie 3. Good Girls v. Bad Girls
Nancy I
Claudia 4. Discovery and Shame
Marge
Yvonne 5. The Family's Fears
Jeanette
Ruth 6. Going Away
Karen I
Pam 7. Birth and Surrender
Margaret
Leslie 8. The Aftermath
Susan III
Madeline 9. Search and Reunion
Susan II
Jennifer 10. Talking and Listening
Lydia
Linda I 11. Every Mother but My Own Afterword
A Note on the Interviews
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Journalism of the first order, moving and informative in equal measure. (San Francisco Chronicle)
A remarkably well-researched and accomplished book. (The New York Times Book Review)
A wrenching, riveting book. (Chicago Tribune)
Haunting. (People)
National Book Critics Circle Award: Finalist 2007
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