Books like Emma's Laugh

How does one transform from a rural, home-schooled environment in Utah to earning a PhD at the University of Cambridge? Tara’s immersive writing style takes us with her as she strives to learn about life and family and her place within it.

Through her tender eyes of innocence, her innate sense of integrity, and the slow trusting of her intuition, the veils of deception slowly disappear, and Tara is forced to make choices none of us should ever have to make. Sometimes self-preservation is the precursor to transformation and unconditional love.

Britt-Marie Was Here is a book of fiction. Nonetheless, it speaks to me as an example of persevering to get through life’s challenges.

Backman is a master of character development and I easily connected with the protagonist. I, like Britt Marie, have found myself outside my comfort zone, slowly moving forward to figure out how to navigate my new position in life.

For Britt Marie, it was living on her own in a new place, with new people, after leaving her husband upon whom she depended for everything; for me it was becoming a primary caregiver and decision-maker for my disabled twin sister.

Very different positions and yet sharing the challenge of accepting our new situation in life. I didn’t want the book to end.

In May of 2015, two-year-old Greta Greene was hit in the head by bricks falling from a nearby building while sitting on a bench with her grandmother. She died shortly after.

I remember hearing of it on the news and wondering how the parents and grandmother could survive such a trauma. Jayson Greene’s book tells us how. For me, it was a reminder that, even when the worst happens and we find ourselves in the dark of the tunnel, the light can shine again.

Reading this book I realized that this family made it through the same way I got through my own trauma: one step at a time, one day at a time; sometimes even just one small moment at a time.

I first read this book shortly after it was published in 1981. I was looking for the answer to the question of why bad things happen in this world.

Kushner did not have an answer to that question, but insights into how we might face the challenges that life can present when those “bad things” happen. He, himself, went through a significant trauma: hearing that his young son had a progressive disease that would not allow him to live into adulthood. Yet Kushner found a way to survive and to move forward.

I’ve read this book multiple times. It always reinforces for me the idea that the difficulties we face in life are just part of living and that even though we may suffer through hard times, life is, indeed, worth living. We can and we must go on.

It is rare to find the view of a birth father in a story or online, so I was keen to read this to help widen my perspectives. This insightful, reflective autobiography helped me to imagine how my son’s birth father may be affected by the adoption. Andrew shares how the loss of his son to adoption has affected so many of his choices throughout the rest of his life. I read this around the time that I was due to write a contact letter to my son’s birth parents, and I feel that it helped me to write something that I hope his birth parents will find supportive and reassuring, rather than a superficial update to “tick the box.”

Spare and poetic, this beautiful debut novel explores teenage pregnancy, adoption, and secrets. Addie Lockwood knows Roland Rhodes during high school. They live in a small Southern town and develop a friendship over an appreciation of blues music. But later, in their thirties, when they reconnect in California, Addie falls in love with Roland. When she later realizes she’s pregnant, she makes a critical and heartbreaking decision: she doesn’t tell Roland about the baby, whom she names Byrd, and she gives the child up for adoption. But Addie never stops thinking about Byrd, wondering, hoping one day he will fly back her way. This novel is gorgeously written and what an ending.

When I first heard Gretchen Sisson speak about her long-term study involving birth mothers, I felt gratified. Through her impeccable research, she quantified the feelings and experiences Ann Fessler had written about her book, The Girls That Went Away.

Because of my reunion and relationship with my own birth mother, I understand the importance of giving these women a voice and validating it through a scientific study. The conversation with those touched by adoption is important work. For it offers to those outside the adoption constellation a serious and accurate glimpse inside.

The pioneering godmother of the open-adoption movement in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Silber did ground-shaking work to bring transparency to the adoption process, which ultimately, is better for the mental health of all parties involved. In Dear Birthmother, a primer of sorts, she helps adoptive parents understand the love, humanity, and loss intrinsic to placing a child for adoption. I love this book because it shines a light on the much-deserved compassion to these women who give up so much in search of a better life for themselves and their children.

Imani is thirteen and approaching her Bat Mitzvah. She is also an African-American adopted by a white Jewish family.

She has many questions about her birthparents and her own place in the world. When she has the opportunity to read the diary of her adopted mother’s grandmother who fled Europe as a Jewish refugee during World War II, Imani learns why sometimes mothers make impossible choices to save their children’s lives.

This novel is a riveting mix of history and coming of age. 

I loved Glaser’s book because it skillfully presents closed adoption history within the context of a real-life story. For me, it took the best parts of Nancy Verrier’s and Ann Fessler’s books and presented them as a puzzle that needed solving.

The gripping account of a birth mother and her son who were thwarted at many junctures in their desire to reconnect authentically highlighted the injustices of a rigid, closed adoption system. The book also validated the struggles my twin sister and I faced in reconnecting with our own birth relatives.

Like my own story, this is a tale of love and loss that highlights the importance of identity and belonging.