100 books like I Would Meet You Anywhere

Okay, this is not a memoir, and Glaser doesn’t have a personal connection with adoption. BUT she is a phenomenal writer and excellent reporter, which means she beautifully tells other people’s stories. And she does so here with so much empathy and integrity. This is the story of the forced relinquishment of a baby boy during the Baby Scoop Era and his journey of reconnecting with his birthmother decades later.

It’s an astounding, heart-wrenching story that highlights the incredible tenacity of a young mother and her stunning fight to keep her baby. This story made me cry….a lot.

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.

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).

I was drawn to Harness’ incredible memoir because she speaks truth to power from an Indigenous perspective as a survivor of Indian adoption.

As an infant in the 1960s, Harness was adopted by a white couple and raised far from the rez, far from her birth community, and completely segregated from her cultural heritage. This story is about her weaving her way back home and making sense of her traumatic adoption.

As an adoptee myself I found her story gut wrenching and inspiring. Harness is a brilliant writer and a phenomenal woman. Her wisdom, authenticity, and strength reverberate through the pages of this beautiful memoir.

I love this book because, beyond the fabulous, richly layered story, it takes what should be unlikeable characters and makes you root for them. April Epner is flawed—brittle, sarcastic and closed off at times—but I love her.

As a reader, I can understand why she is the way she is, and that’s the key to making her sympathetic and likable. The payoff is so satisfying when April makes a deep emotional connection and opens up. Bernice Graverman, April’s newfound biological mom, is tacky, loud and over the top, and yet, I was rooting for her. She has a tough shell, but there’s a touching hidden vulnerability.

One more thing I loved about this book…I lived in Quincy, MA (outside of Boston), where this story is set, for five years—it perfectly captures what life was like there in the nineties.

Hata, a Korean, adopted by a Japanese couple, serves the Japanese Army as a medic in World War II. His job is to care for enslaved Koreans who serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers. His experiences are the material of nightmares. Years later he leads a deceptively quiet life in a small town in New Jersey with his Korean adoptive daughter. It is deceptively quiet because his unresolved war experiences, presented in flashbacks, haunt him. I admired the abrupt manner in which Chang-Rae Lee interrupted Hata’s uneventful life with horrific memories.

The author’s method felt like the triggering of those who have suffered trauma and continue to relive events as PTSD. This approach of interweaving past with present inspired my depiction of a young German woman living a quiet life on a primitive Icelandic farm, milking the cows and raking the hay, while being repeatedly interrupted by memories of… show more.

I used to work as an oncology RN so I generally avoid cancer stories, but this author is a friend so I gave the book a chance, and wow am I glad I did. This story manages to capture the crushing reality of cancer for both the patient and the people who love her, but it’s also funny and mysterious and romantic, with plenty of meaningful things to say about grief. It takes insight and compassion to balance all those elements without ever being disrespectful to or flippant about terminal illness. I powered through this gorgeous book (the cover is even more incredible in person!) in one sitting and finished the story feeling hopeful and inspired.

Imagine this. You were adopted as a child. You’re now an adult with a medical condition. So, you take a DNA test to find blood relatives who could shed some light and family history on your disease. But you get the shock of your life when an FBI agent shows up and tells you they received your test results too and you are related to a serial killer! Ivy’s life spins out of control as she travels to meet her relatives and find a killer. Ivy is told that her mother was murdered by The Full Moon Killer and now she is getting too close…could she be the next victim? A chilling novel with lots of twists that left me thinking if I were in Ivy’s shoes, just this once, I’d rather DNA kept secrets.

The bloodthirsty roses, Isra the blind beauty, and Gem the intriguing beast. It was an intriguing combo that first made me pick up this book and start the beginning of this adventure. That isn't to say that this book is all sweetness, there are most definitely moments that had me seething with anger. The way the 'perfect' Smooth Skins treated the flawed one of their own kind, and the Monstrous struggling to survive outside the dome. But by far my most favorite part was how Gem and Isla bonded over gardening together. Yes, it was originally a lie so that Gem could gather information to help his own people, but it turned into some of the most character-building scenes that tied the whole story together in a rose-shaped bow.

This is a peculiar and marvelous book about birth families, adopted families, and “found” families, and how each of these can be equally screwed up.

Starting in Ireland in the 1940s, the story is peppered with sharp, clever dialog and vivid, fully-human characters. I love how the narrator struggles with his own heart for decades, unable to decide what he wants, who he loves, what’s right, what’s wrong, etc.—in other words, all the stuff I haven’t figured out yet myself. 

Coincidence also plays a huge role in this book, basically making an ass of everyone, which I find oddly comforting since it reminds me that part of being human is having very little control over my own life. Painfully funny and brilliant from cover to cover.