Why am I passionate about this?

When I was going through the process of adopting my second child, after having my first by a more conventional route, I looked for diverse representations of mothering to help me make sense of my journey. These recommended books helped me to understand the lived experience from all sides of the adoption triangle: adoptee, birth mother, and adopter. I was curious about the experience of other mothers whose children have an additional mother and found a lack of life writing on surrogacy and egg donation. As a published novelist and poet, I decided to move into experimental life writing and undertook a PhD in Creative Writing to discover and write their stories.


I wrote

Another Mother: Curating and Creating Voices of Adoption, Surrogacy and Egg Donation

By Shanta Everington,

Book cover of Another Mother: Curating and Creating Voices of Adoption, Surrogacy and Egg Donation

What is my book about?

Written by an adoptive and biological mother, this book draws on interviews with six women to offer a fresh approach…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Other Mother

Shanta Everington Why did I love this book?

Carole Schaefer’s poignant memoir presents the story of a naïve, young, Catholic American woman falling pregnant outside of marriage and being pressured to give up her baby for adoption in 1965 at age nineteen. The book charts an eighteen-year journey to tracing and meeting her birth son.

The book’s unusual vantage point makes for compelling reading, offering insight into an experience seldom written about.

By Carol Schaefer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Other Mother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1965, Carol Schaefer was 19, a freshman in college and deeply in love. She was also pregnant. When her boyfriend’s family opposed their marrying, her parents sequestered her in a Catholic home for unwed mothers a state away, where she was isolated and where secrecy prevailed. She had only to give up her baby for her sin to be forgiven and then all would soon be forgotten she was told. The child, in turn, would be placed with a “good” family, instead of having his life ruined by the stigma of illegitimacy. Carol tried to find the strength to…


Book cover of No Matter What: An Adoptive Family's Story of Hope, Love and Healing

Shanta Everington Why did I love this book?

Sally Donovan’s book is a memoir by an adoptive mother of two children who were removed from their birth family due to abuse and neglect. It’s an eye-opening, and at times eye-watering, read, educating the reader about the complexities of mothering children who have experienced trauma. It is also a deeply moving book about ‘hope, love and healing.’

Anyone considering adopting would benefit from reading this book.

By Sally Donovan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Matter What as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

I love you, no matter what.'

An uplifting true story of an ordinary couple who build an extraordinary family, No Matter What describes how Sally and Rob Donovan embark upon a journey to adopt following a diagnosis of infertility.

Sally Donovan brings to life with characteristic wit and honesty the difficulties of living with infertility, their decision to adopt and the bewildering process involved. Finally matched with young siblings Jaymey and Harlee, Sally and Rob's joy turns to shock as they discover disturbing details of their children's past and realise that they must do everything it takes to heal their…


Book cover of Imagined Sons

Shanta Everington Why did I love this book?

Carrie Etter’s haunting poetry collection presents the imaginings of a birth mother who gave up her child for adoption when she was seventeen, exploring the many diverse visions she has of her son as an adult. The poet sees her son everywhere: in the supermarket, on the train, in the park.

This is a profoundly affecting collection that I could not put down.

By Carrie Etter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Imagined Sons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter reflects on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. In a series of haunting, psalm-like prose poems of enormous courage and insight, she describes possible encounters with this son now in his late teens, expressing how 'sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering'. The series of 'Birthmother's Confessions' return to repeated, harrowing questions that yield different answers at different moments. This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill ('hair the dark red of a nectarine pit') leaves a mark on the reader which…


Book cover of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Shanta Everington Why did I love this book?

Published twenty-one years after her autobiographical novel, Jeanette Winterson’s memoir lays bare her experience as an adoptee.

Her adoption is not a happy one, with her strict Pentecostal adoptive mother rejecting her, locking her out of the house, and even subjecting her to an exorcism. Winterson eventually reunites with her birth mother, which leads to an emotional collapse.

As an adopter, I found this to be a painful but important read, and I am grateful to Winterson for writing her truth.

By Jeanette Winterson,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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,…


Book cover of The Adoption Papers

Shanta Everington Why did I love this book?

Adoptee Jackie Kay’s poetry collection presents the voices of three speakers who are distinguished typographically: the daughter, the adoptive mother, and the birth mother.

Read in conjunction with Kay’s memoir on adoption, Read Dust Road, this poetry collection offers a fascinating insight into the adoption triangle through multiple versions of the same events. 

By Jackie Kay,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Adoption Papers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2022 The Adoption Papers was selected as one of ten books representing the 1990s in The Big Jubilee Read, a celebration of great books from across the Commonwealth to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, one of only three poetry collections out of 70 books on the list.


Explore my book 😀

Another Mother: Curating and Creating Voices of Adoption, Surrogacy and Egg Donation

By Shanta Everington,

Book cover of Another Mother: Curating and Creating Voices of Adoption, Surrogacy and Egg Donation

What is my book about?

Written by an adoptive and biological mother, this book draws on interviews with six women to offer a fresh approach to life writing, combining edited interviews, fact-fiction, poetry, lyric essays, and quotation collage.

Alison conceived her first child via an egg donor in Cyprus before going on to adopt a second child in the UK; egg donor Charlotte’s eggs made two babies for other families before she had any children of her own; Rubi used surrogacy services in India to become a mother; surrogate mother Robin had two babies for another couple; adoptive mother Lorraine was adopted as a baby herself; and birth mother Margaret, now in her seventies, was reunited with the child who was adopted through the Church many years ago.

Book cover of The Other Mother
Book cover of No Matter What: An Adoptive Family's Story of Hope, Love and Healing
Book cover of Imagined Sons

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,322

readers submitted
so far, will you?

You might also like...

Follow Me to Africa

By Penny Haw,

Book cover of Follow Me to Africa

Penny Haw Author Of The Invincible Miss Cust

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Storyteller Dog walker Dreamer Runner Reader

Penny's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.

It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories. 

Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey…

Follow Me to Africa

By Penny Haw,

What is this book about?

Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.

It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories.

Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in adoption, child abuse, and lesbian topics and characters?

Adoption 98 books
Child Abuse 61 books