I forgot to register this when I first got it and now I don't remember where I found it. I suspect in a Little Free Library. Used, good condition.

I seem to come upon these adoption stories a lot. This one is a memoir, unlike most of the others I have read.

A.M. Homes has written about adoption in her fiction. In this she lets us in on her own story. Adopted as a baby, she learns that her birth mother is interested in meeting her when she is 31 years old. She had not sought her out and wasn't even sure she wanted to meet her. After all, her mother gave her away.

More, she was always aware of her adoptive mother's fear that one day her daughter would be taken from her. She had lost a son and thus clung to her adopted daughter.

So A.M. decides to meet her biological mother. It isn't the meeting we see in movies or books. Her mother is excited to see her, yet appears not all that interested in who she is. When A.M. later meets her father he seems more interested in what she can do for him than what he can do for her.

After the initial curiosity wears off, A.M. is ready to go on with the life she had been living. Her bio mother isn't, however. She wants to see her all the time. She wants what A.M. cannot give, or does not want to.

It becomes strange, having two sets of parents. And it becomes difficult to work through the various internal conflicts. In fact, it took Homes quite a long time before she was ready to write about it.

I didn't love it. It's one more story that is helping me to understand the effects of adoption. It seems that many issues that come up are less likely to be problems when the adoption is open. Fortunately, that's the way of now. Admittedly, the mixed families that result can be odd, but the world is changing. It isn't all nuclear families now, and I'm not sure that ever was the best type family.

Inside the box!