Overview

Travel across the years in a unique hybrid collage, I Must Have Wandered. Rendered in personal letters, lyrical prose, fragments, and photos, the memoir begins with an imaginative framing of a post-World War II South Carolina infant relinquishment and her closed adoption by a military couple. Family separations and transience frustrate the girl's early childhood. Her father's demands for model behavior and religious piety deepen the primal distress of abandonment. She comes of age in the turbulent 1960s, amid an atmosphere of heightened anxiety: the culture of confidentiality of his Air Force Intelligence career, Cold War fear, and the Southeast Asian conflicts. School transfers and identity bewilderment threaten her choices. When the need to know her origins surfaces at forty, adoptee advocates help her break the barrier of sealed birth records, and she launches the search for her natural mother. Decades later, DNA testing sets her on a parallel journey of self-discovery, and she begins to reconcile the loss and privilege of her adopted life; gaining a wealth of biological family and her true heritage. The Second Edition features a new cover and interior design, an updated bibliography, notes, resources, a new epilogue, an expanded photo gallery in the e-book, and a link to the gallery in the new soft cover.

Full Product Details

9798223634430

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

"My earliest memories were formed from words and music. My first five months are mostly unaccounted for, but the couple who would adopt me sang and smiled, talked, and read to me. I studied Webster's Dictionary at bedtime from age eight and wrote personal poems. Reading, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling sustained my interest in school when Air Force transfers disrupted my elementary education. I let go of word-stringing: jottings, notes, lists, letters, essays, and poetry when at age fifty-eight I was stricken with a brain hemorrhage. While recovering at home, after months of hospital rehab, began online writing courses to suss the ""why"" and ""how"" of my life, beginning with the story of my stroke. I absorbed the memoirs of Natalie Goldberg, Annie Dillard, Brenda Miller, and many others, captivated by the words and meaning that poured from their souls. I practiced on my new laptop, typing with my formerly unfavored left hand, as I still do, taking stock of what has happened to me, as well as what I have made happen. Thus, writing memoirs is therapeutic, and life-affirming. I hope my words resonate with you."

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available