I was adopted as a baby, so I have first-hand experience of the emotions and challenges this presents. I am passionate about shining light on this often misunderstood and complex family trauma through my writing. My memoir Blood and Blood, an emotive exploration of the search for my birth relatives, was shortlisted for the Mslexia Prize. My research extends to fiction and non-fiction, where the psychological effects of adoption are referenced or highlighted. I am always keen to chat with fellow care-experienced people. I hope you find the books on this list helpful.
I have about five different editions of this amazing book. Heathcliff, Cathy, Thrushcross Grange…it’s all so bleak, gothic, and full of exclamation marks that you have to love its drama and tragedy set within the Yorkshire Moors.
At the heart of it, I love that Heathcliff (although exhibiting questionable behavior by today’s standards) is a foundling-done-good. I love a story where the discarded underdog ends up in a massive house on the moors with loads of money. Nevertheless, it is a tricky read, switching between narratives, but who hasn’t burst into song ‘a la Kate Bush’ upon hearing that title?
One of the great novels of the nineteenth century, Emily Bronte's haunting tale of passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of destructive love. Her tragically short life is brilliantly imagined in the major new movie, Emily, starring Emma Mackey in the title role.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of Wuthering Heights features an afterword by David Pinching.
One wild, snowy night on the Yorkshire moors, a gentleman asks…
One thing about being adopted is you have an in-built radar to seek out others who are too. I read Jeanette Winterson’s first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit when I was a teenager, and since then, I have been in awe of her as a writer and her ability to eloquently describe her personal experience as an adoptee.
This book is her autobiography, and there were occasions while reading it that I had to stop and cry. Finally, someone else had written about what I had kept holed up inside me. Her final chapter, "The Wound," speaks so profoundly to me as an adopted adult. It is honest, sharp, and fierce.
The shocking, heart-breaking - and often very funny - true story behind Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It was Jeanette's version of the story of a terraced house in Accrington, an adopted child, and the thwarted giantess Mrs Winterson. It was a cover story, a painful past written over and repainted. It was a story of survival.
This book is that story's the silent twin. It is full of hurt and humour and a fierce love of life. It is about the pursuit of happiness,…
If you haven’t already, READ ERIC LAROCCA NOW! I have devoured all his published work, and this one was so bleak, subversive, gothic, and intense… in fact, I’m sure a whole dictionary would never completely describe how it made me feel.
He has a way of slicing through the viscera and injecting words into your bloodstream. Whenever I read any of his stories, I feel inspired as a horror writer to up my game and insert more gore into my own writing. Yet, he makes it look incredibly easy, almost as if he is writing poetry using his own bodily fluids. Perhaps he does!? Proceed with care…
"When you're given a gift, something else gets taken away."
A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.
A grotesque and thrilling dark fantasy, We Can Never Leave This Place is a harrowing portrait of inherited grief and familial trauma.
"We Can Never Leave This Place is the apocalyptic 21st century Grimm's fairy tale…
This book poses the question "what if" with its twists and turns of life pivoting on others’ decisions and the secrets they keep.
I love how the chapters are titled as random objects like "Small vase, handmade by unknown Warwickshire potter, 1974" or "Cut fragments of surgical thread, in small transparent case, dated July 1983." It reminds me of scavenging in charity shops and coming across an item with a personal history, like an old box of postcards with a stranger’s handwriting or a black and white wedding photograph from the 1950s.
As an adoptee (and writer), I am always looking for tenuous links where they might/might not exist. I guess I have a soft spot for nostalgia and the ‘never quite knowing’ that comes from a life lived without the full story.
I consider this the adoptee's "bible," and it has been described like this by others for good reason. It is not an easy read, but like most well-researched non-fiction, it offers a brutal truth that somehow heals.
Reading this book was like going through therapy. The way it lays out the experience of family through the eyes of the adoption triad is not for the faint-hearted. I love this book because very few books address the trauma of adoption so directly through psychological research and offer ways of empowerment to help heal a misunderstood or unacknowledged life experience for many.
The Primal Wound is a seminal work which revolutionizes the way we think about adoption. It describes and clarifies the effects of separating babies from their birth mothers as a primal loss which affects the relationships of the adopted person throughout life.. It is a book about pre-and perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding, and loss. It gives adoptees, whose pain has long been unacknowledged or misunderstood, validation for their feelings, as well as explanations for their behavior. It lists the coping mechanisms which adoptees use to be able to attach and live in a family to whom they are not related…
This book is a dark, twisty psychological thriller with a slow burn following the intertwining stories of women related to the title character’s life. Myrrh is searching for her birth parents while being goaded by a malevolent goblin who lives inside her. Cayenne exists in a loveless marriage with a man who won’t/can’t give her the baby she yearns for. As she descends into deeper desperation, her actions impact not only those she knows but also strangers she has never met.
Their stories collide in the most catastrophic ways, defining how fate works in the lives of those at the mercy of others. It highlights the adoption journey and some of the intrinsic traits associated with those who are adopted.
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.
Alexandra is a gifted student, adoring daughter, and exuberant prankster. She is also hiding in the open. After a blissful childhood, Alex learned she’s an illegal refugee from a brutal regime, smuggled into…
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of…
