Love Bitterroot? Readers share 72 books like Bitterroot...

By Susan Devan Harness,

Here are 72 books that Bitterroot fans have personally recommended if you like Bitterroot. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption

Julie Ryan McGue Author Of Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood

From my list on debunk age-old myths, mistruths, and misperceptions.

Why am I passionate about this?

After I was sent for a breast biopsy in 2008, my twin sister and I began the very real work of researching our closed adoption. My health, my sister’s, and our collective six children depended upon it. For nearly five decades, I had placed my adoption in an internal lockbox, one I had promised myself I would get to “one day.” At 48, that day had finally come. Concurrent with my search, I absorbed many of the books I mention here. These works became foundational in how I came to view my adoption, and they provided the support I needed during the search and reunion process. 

Julie's book list on debunk age-old myths, mistruths, and misperceptions

Julie Ryan McGue Why did Julie love this book?

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.

By Gabrielle Glaser,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked American Baby as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times Notable Book

The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other.

During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle fell in love and became pregnant. Her enraged family sent her to a maternity home, and after she gave birth,…


Book cover of All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

Rebecca Wellington Author Of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

From my list on straight up, real memoirs on motherhood and adoption.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America. 

Rebecca's book list on straight up, real memoirs on motherhood and adoption

Rebecca Wellington Why did Rebecca love this book?

Chung was born and adopted five years after me, also in Washington state. Like me, she wrestled her whole life with feelings of shame and discomfort around her adoption. Unlike me, Chung is a woman of color, adopted into a white family in a super-white town where she stood out like a sore thumb. Unlike me, Chung took the brave step, before having her own children, of searching for her birth family.

While I read this vulnerable and beautifully written memoir, I felt like I was walking with Chung on her journey as an adoptee and mother, all the while wishing I could be as brave as Chung. This is a truly inspiring story.

By Nicole Chung,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked All You Can Ever Know as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR)

What does it means to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them?

Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of…


Book cover of Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America

Rebecca Wellington Author Of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

From my list on straight up, real memoirs on motherhood and adoption.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America. 

Rebecca's book list on straight up, real memoirs on motherhood and adoption

Rebecca Wellington Why did Rebecca love this book?

Austin’s memoir was the first book I read as a starting point for researching my own historical memoir. Simply put, Austin’s story blew my mind, challenged my thinking, and massively influenced the way I understand my own motherhood and adoption journey.

Austin is a Black, single mother and adoptive parent of a Black son, who she adopted through the Los Angeles foster care system. Her story of motherhood through adoption pulls no punches. She takes on the intersections of racism and misogyny and speaks truth to power in this deeply personal and powerful memoir.

I LOVE this book, and everyone needs to read it (especially white people).

By Nefertiti Austin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Motherhood So White as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The story every mother in America needs to read. As featured on NPR and the TODAY Show. All moms have to deal with choosing baby names, potty training, finding your village, and answering your kid's tough questions, but if you are raising a Black child, you have to deal with a lot more than that. Especially if you're a single Black mom... and adopting.

Nefertiti Austin shares her story of starting a family through adoption as a single Black woman. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces…


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? by Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…

Book cover of I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir

Rebecca Wellington Author Of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

From my list on straight up, real memoirs on motherhood and adoption.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America. 

Rebecca's book list on straight up, real memoirs on motherhood and adoption

Rebecca Wellington Why did Rebecca love this book?

First off, Ito is just a masterful storyteller. If she had to write about restocking shelves at a grocery store, Ito would make it riveting and hilarious. So, just reading her writing is a highly engaging joy. Second, this story is epic. This is Ito’s story of finding her birth mother and the challenges, joys, and heartbreak of that reunion as she herself became a mother.

What I love most about Ito’s story is that she effortlessly threads the needle of being real and raw yet funny and relatable at the same time. Whether you are a mom, dad, childless, adopted, or not, you will enjoy this journey.

By Susan Kiyo Ito,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked I Would Meet You Anywhere as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

“Susan Kiyo Ito is like a surgeon operating on herself. She is delicate, precise, and at times cutting with her words. But it is all in service of her own healing and to encourage us all to be brave enough to do the same in our own stories.” —W. Kamau Bell

Growing up with adoptive nisei parents, Susan Kiyo Ito knew only that her birth mother was Japanese American and her father white. But finding and meeting her birth mother in her early twenties was only the beginning of her search for answers, history,…


Book cover of Perma Red

Russell Rowland Author Of In Open Spaces

From my list on by women writers in the west.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have published seven books, all set in the West, including an anthology, West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West, that features writers from every state west of the Mississippi. For four years now, I have been doing a podcast called Breakfast in Montana, where my partner Aaron Parrett and I discuss Montana books. I also published a book in 2016 called 56 Counties, where I traveled to every county in Montana and interviewed people about what it means to live in this state. So I have a good feel for the people of this region and for the books they love. 

Russell's book list on by women writers in the west

Russell Rowland Why did Russell love this book?

And another Montana writer, Debra Magpie Earling grew up in Spokane, and is a member of the Salish tribe. Her 2002 debut novel, Perma Red, became an immediate classic. It’s the story of Louise White Elk, a young woman living on the reservation in the 1940s who is determined to avoid the trap of becoming the possession of a man. A challenge for any woman during that time period, but especially for a native woman living in a place with few options. Earling’s prose is elegant but tough, and that would be a pretty apt description of her main character as well as Louise makes a valiant effort to fight off the powerful men trying to take control of her life. 

By Debra Magpie Earling,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Bold, passionate, and more urgent than ever, Debra Magpie Earling's powerful classic novel is reborn in this new edition.

On the Flathead Indian Reservation, summer is ending, and Louise White Elk is determined to forge her own path. Raised by her Grandmother Magpie after the death of her mother, Louise and her younger sister have grown up into the harsh social and physical landscape of western Montana in the 1940s, where Native people endure boarding schools and life far from home. As she approaches adulthood, Louise hopes to create an independent life for herself and an improved future for her…


Book cover of The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico

Susan Kellogg Author Of Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present

From my list on the history of Native women in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a sheltered environment on Long Island, NY, I had little sense of a larger world, except for seeing images of the Vietnam War. Going to college in the early 70s and becoming an anthropology major, the world began to open up, yet I hadn't experienced life outside the U.S. until my mid-20s as a graduate student living in Mexico to do dissertation research. That experience and travels to Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, and Costa Rica helped me to see how diverse Latin America is, and how real poverty and suffering are as well. Coming into my own as a historian, teacher, and writer, my fascination with women’s voices, experiences, and activism only grew.

Susan's book list on the history of Native women in Latin America

Susan Kellogg Why did Susan love this book?

This superb book is a culturally and indigenous-language-focused study of women in four central Mesoamerican native societies—Aztecs (Nahuas), Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe.

In addition to a deep dive into texts dealing with all facets of women’s lives, Sousa uses visual evidence to great effect, showing how images contain much information about women’s and gender history, a history in which women struggled over centuries to maintain agency and authority despite efforts by a newly imposed colonial state to erode their power and status and exploit their labor.

By Lisa Sousa,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book is an ambitious and wide-ranging social and cultural history of gender relations among indigenous peoples of New Spain, from the Spanish conquest through the first half of the eighteenth century. In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico-the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe-and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in prehispanic and colonial Mesoamerica.

Sousa intricately renders the full complexity of women's life experiences in the household and community, from the significance of their names, age, and social standing, to their identities, ethnicities, family, dress,…


Book cover of Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century

Rickie Solinger Author Of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction

From my list on why we need reproductive justice.

Why am I passionate about this?

Reproductive justice – reproductive rights – reproductive self-determination – this has been my passion for decades. I’m a historian. The most important thing I’ve learned is how reproductive bodies have always been racialized in the United States, from 1619 to the present day. Circumstances and tactics have changed over time, but lawmakers and others have always valued the reproduction of some people while degrading the reproduction of people defined as less valuable – or valueless – to the nation. Throughout our history, reproductive politics has been at the center of public life.  As we see today. I keep writing because I want more and more of us to understand where we are – and why. 

Rickie's book list on why we need reproductive justice

Rickie Solinger Why did Rickie love this book?

This book is a first. Theobald gives us a really interesting and comprehensive history of pregnancy, birthing, motherhood -- and activism -- on the Crow Reservation in Montana. She explains the interventions of the federal government, for example, via coercive sterilization and child removal, and provides rich accounts of family, tribal, and inter-tribal resistance -- and claims of self-determination -- in the face of these interventions.

By Brianna Theobald,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Reproduction on the Reservation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This pathbreaking book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As Brianna Theobald illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But Theobald examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist…


Book cover of Hatter Fox

David Hight Author Of An Unlikely Messiah

From my list on fiction that examine the human condition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m just a guy, a normal guy who enjoys thinking and writing about things that can nudge humanity along towards peace. If everybody thought just a little bit about it, we’d have it.

David's book list on fiction that examine the human condition

David Hight Why did David love this book?

Hatter Fox is one of those rare stories which causes me to lose my sense of self.

There is no who am I, how am I, or why am I, none of that matters, all that matters is the story. This story is so real, and shows so accurately what can happen to young minds when they are raised in an oppressive, prejudiced environment.

Hatter Fox also exemplifies the true power of fiction, in that it allows us to shed a tear. We steel ourselves against the harsh realities of life, and do not weep for the downtrodden, but for fictional characters, we are free to feel our sorrows.

By Marilyn Harris,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A young doctor struggles to save an alienated and vengeful Navajo girl from imprisonment and self-destruction


Book cover of Flint & Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake

Dorris Heffron Author Of City Wolves: Historical Fiction

From my list on the adventurers of The Klondike Gold Rush.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a novelist all my adult life. My first three books are novels about teenagers, regarded as pioneers in the genre of Young Adult fiction. My inspiration has always been real people, events, and places. Animals, especially dogs have always been part of my life. I turned to adult fiction because I felt the need to write about the full cast of life. City Wolves was inspired, if not driven by my first Malamute, Yukon Sally. With the research she led me to do into wolves, sled dogs, the history of women veterinarians, the real people who were part of the Klondike Gold Rush, I found some marvellous biographies, histories, biological studies, and poetry.

Dorris' book list on the adventurers of The Klondike Gold Rush

Dorris Heffron Why did Dorris love this book?

My main focus in my book is people, Meg Wilkinson the first female veterinarian and other adventurers and pioneers who wound up on the Klondike Gold Rush.

Though the wolf like nature of humans and the human nature of wolves permeates the whole story. I also had to research veterinary history but I found no particular book on that to recommend.

Pauline Johnson did not go to the Klondike but she is a very influential figure of the times and in the life of Meg. I’m a fan of Charlotte Gray’s biographies and I think her biography of Pauline Johnson is the best. 

By Charlotte Gray,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Flint & Feather as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A graceful biography that was a #1 national bestseller, Flint & Feather confirms Charlotte Gray’s position as a master biographer, a writer with a rare gift for transforming a historical character into a living, breathing woman who immediately captures our imagination.

In Flint & Feather, Charlotte Gray explores the life of this nineteenth-century daughter of a Mohawk chief and English gentlewoman, creating a fascinating portrait of a young woman equally at home on the stage in her “Indian” costume and in the salons of the rich and powerful. Uncovering Pauline Johnson’s complex and dramatic personality, Flint & Feather is studded…


Book cover of The Round House

Stephen L. Pevar Author Of The Rights of Indians and Tribes

From my list on rights of Indian tribes and their members.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 1971, when I graduated from law school, I received a fellowship to help staff a Legal Aid office on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I lived there for nearly four years, representing tribal members in tribal, state, and federal courts. I then worked for 45 years on the National Legal Staff of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One of my major responsibilities was helping Indian tribes and their members protect and enforce their rights, and I filed numerous cases on their behalf. During that time, I taught Federal Indian Law for more than 20 years and also published The Rights of Indians and Tribes. 

Stephen's book list on rights of Indian tribes and their members

Stephen L. Pevar Why did Stephen love this book?

This novel won the National Book Award and it’s easy to see why. Written by a Native author about reservation life, it discusses a crime that occurred that—like many reservation crimes—went unsolved for a long time.

The book is informative and compelling, and it weaves Native practices and culture into the story. I found it particularly interesting because it includes characters and themes that resonated with my experiences.

By Louise Erdrich,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Round House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the National Book Award • Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book

From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal…


Book cover of American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
Book cover of All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
Book cover of Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Montana, the American West, and adopted children?

Montana 82 books
The American West 144 books
Adopted Children 22 books