First published 2021
In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle discovers she is pregnant in an America where birth control remains difficult to obtain and abortion is illegal. Her unsympathetic family ships her off to a maternity home, where she endures months of isolation and shame. At the hospital, nurses refuse to let Margaret hold her newborn son before adoption agencies whisk him away. Pressured into signing away her parental rights, Margaret loses her child to a system built on secrecy and deception. The adoption industry fabricates stories about children's backgrounds while making shady deals with doctors and researchers. Margaret goes on to marry and raise a large family, but she never stops yearning for her firstborn son. Unknown to her, he spends his early years living just blocks away, wondering about his origins. Both mother and child carry the wound of their separation across decades. Their parallel searches for each other reveal the human cost of an exploitative system that separated millions of families through lies and legal barriers.
Genres: family, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, biography-memoir, 21st-century, adoption, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-secrets, parallel-narratives, second-chance
Setting: America
Period: 1961
352 pages · Hardcover · Viking
Content warnings: child-death, emotional-abuse, pregnancy-loss