Awards

• Short-listed for Juan E. Méndez Book Award 2025 (United States)
• Short-listed for Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction 2025 (United States)
• Winner of Marysa Navarro Best Book Prize 2025 (United States)

Overview

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction Shortlisted for the 2025 Juan E. Méndez Book Award ""Detailed and heartrending . . . uses years of research to show the way that a country destabilized by war can invite merciless profiteers to break apart families"" -John Washington, Harper's The poignant saga of Guatemala's adoption industry: an international marketplace for children, built on a foundation of inequality, war, and Indigenous dispossession. In 2009 Dolores Preat traveled to a small Maya town in Guatemala to find her birth mother. At the address retrieved from her adoption file, she was told that her supposed mother, one Rosario Colop Chim, never gave up a child for adoption-but in 1984, a girl across the street was abducted. At that house, Preat didn't meet her mother, but she did meet Colop Chim, who turned out to be a jaladora-a baby broker. Preat and some 40,000 other Guatemalan children, many Indigenous, were kidnapped or otherwise coercively parted from families scarred by poverty and civil war. Amid the US-backed army's genocide against Indigenous Maya, children were wrested from their villages and put up for adoption illegally, mostly in the United States. Eventually adoption became a private enterprise, overseen by lawyers who made good money matching children to overseas families. Drawing on government archives, oral histories, and a rare cache of files from war crimes investigations, Until I Find You reckons with the human toll of an industry that builds loving families in the Global North out of exploitation, endemic violence, and dislocation in the Global South.

Full Product Details

9780674304895

Table of Contents

Reviews

A sweeping investigation into the adoption industry in Guatemala...offers a detailed history of how Guatemala developed a unique form of privatized adoption in which children were sometimes stolen or coerced away from their families and sold.--Oscar Lopez ""New York Review of Books"" (2/5/2026 12:00:00 AM) [This book] isn't just a history of transnational adoption. It is also a crucial reappraisal of the history of mid- and late-20th century Guatemala and the armed conflict that took place between 1960 and 1996. Instead of telling this story from the perspectives of the guerrillas, army officials, student leaders, union activists, or intellectuals, Nolan retells the history through the lens of childhood, family, and adoption. Doing so allows her to reveal urgent, if devastating, insights not just about political violence and genocide but also about the 'best interests of the child' standard, the brutal consequences of inequality, and the imagined future of a nation.--Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez ""Public Books"" (10/24/2024 12:00:00 AM) A comprehensive backstory of how, for a time, Guatemala became one of the largest sending countries of adopted children in the world.--Rebecca Clouser ""Journal of Latin American Geography"" (9/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) A deeply reported, sobering history.--Cora Currier ""New Republic"" (1/25/2024 12:00:00 AM) A devastatingly important account of overlooked historical actors -- children -- and their place in Guatemala's Cold War history. Nolan requires readers to confront the moral dilemmas inherent in humanitarian programs and situates children and birth mothers at the heart of Guatemala's political violence of the twentieth century. It is a book that will continue to leave its mark and generate important conversations for years to come.--Sarah Foss ""H-Net Reviews"" (8/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) Beautifully written...Full of stunning insights and revelations and narrated with grace and empathy, [this book] is essential reading for anyone interested in Latin American Cold War history, human rights, adoptions, and political violence.--Julie Gibbings ""NACLA Report on the Americas"" (4/2/2024 12:00:00 AM) Detailed and heartrending...uses years of research to show the way that a country destabilized by war can invite merciless profiteers to break apart families...and allow others overseas to reconfigure them according to their own desires.--John Washington ""Harper's"" (4/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) Heart-wrenching, heartfelt, and built through masterful and exceptionally difficult archival research and skillful fieldwork, Until I Find You situates Guatemalan adoptions in global history, explicates their inner workings, and traces the haunting human stories they entail. It is essential reading.--J. T. Way ""Hispanic American Historical Review"" (9/25/2024 12:00:00 AM) Moves fluidly between political context and personal stories...[Nolan] wants us to reckon with this cold reality; with these blurred boundaries of coercion and consent, legality and illegality. She urges us to question how an international marketplace for children, in which so many predatory players acted with impunity, was allowed to flourish.--Anna Temkin ""Times Literary Supplement"" (3/22/2024 12:00:00 AM) Nolan's stirring story showcases how fragmentation begat fragmentation in Guatemala...By unveiling these accounts, Nolan has offered the most urgent history of this dark period in Guatemala in at least a decade.--Ilan Palacios Avineri ""Latin Americanist"" (6/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) Traces the pull and push factors that drove the adoption of children from Guatemala between the 1970s and the first decade of this century...Meticulously reviewing archives of adoption files and court cases, Nolan finds that many adoptions involved fraudulent testimonies, suggesting that children were kidnapped or that their families were coerced into giving them up.--Richard Feinberg ""Foreign Affairs"" (4/23/2024 12:00:00 AM) A staggeringly brilliant work of the heart and the head. One can't read Nolan's story of forced adoptions in Guatemala and not come away both shaken and intellectually challenged. I've read many books on Cold War political violence--but never one that pulls you in, that makes you feel as well as think, as much as this tour de force.--Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Hugely ambitious. With painstaking research and deep sensitivity, Nolan addresses an important and little-studied topic, getting close to stories that are often shrouded in secrecy.--Betsy Konefal, author of For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960-1990 Important, compelling reading. Nolan has interviewed countless people, obtained access to adoption files, read the human rights reports, and sorted through the legal history. This will become a key, authoritative account of the deeply corrupt state of Guatemalan adoption from the 1970s to the 2000s.--Laura Briggs, author of Taking Children: A History of American Terror Like a dark historical fairy tale pulled from a bewitched archive, Until I Find You illuminates the Guatemalan international adoption trade's cruel corruption and heartrending complexities in a boldly original way. Nolan's meticulous research and her beautifully lucid, empathetic writing show how the seemingly benign event of the foreign adoption of an innocent child leaves behind an invisible trail of personal, economic, political, and essentially imperial horrors.--Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder and Monkey Boy The author has provided an essential history and analysis of forced adoption in Guatemala over a 40-year period and the socio-political dynamics that enabled this poor country to play such an infamous role in a tragic global story of human-trafficking. ...Until I Find You is a hard-hitting and disturbing insight into a dark corner of global capitalism, the profoundly racist attitudes of the Global North, and the most despicable of human vices.--Gavin O'Toole ""Latin American Review of Books"" (12/13/2023 12:00:00 AM) With a historian's eye and a journalist's pen, Nolan delves into the dark heart of Guatemalan adoption, a powerful story of state genocide, brutal economic and racial inequality, and a privatized, unregulated adoption market. Revealing the fuzzy boundaries between coercion and consent, legality and illegality, markets and trafficking, facts and rumor, she shows how the extraordinary violence of war gave way to the everyday violence of peacetime--and how children, especially Indigenous children, have been victims of both.--Nara Milanich, author of Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father

[This book] isn't just a history of transnational adoption. It is also a crucial reappraisal of the history of mid- and late-20th century Guatemala and the armed conflict that took place between 1960 and 1996. Instead of telling this story from the perspectives of the guerrillas, army officials, student leaders, union activists, or intellectuals, Nolan retells the history through the lens of childhood, family, and adoption. Doing so allows her to reveal urgent, if devastating, insights not just about political violence and genocide but also about the 'best interests of the child' standard, the brutal consequences of inequality, and the imagined future of a nation.--Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez ""Public Books"" (10/24/2024 12:00:00 AM) A comprehensive backstory of how, for a time, Guatemala became one of the largest sending countries of adopted children in the world.--Rebecca Clouser ""Journal of Latin American Geography"" (9/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) A deeply reported, sobering history.--Cora Currier ""New Republic"" (1/25/2024 12:00:00 AM) A devastatingly important account of overlooked historical actors -- children -- and their place in Guatemala's Cold War history. Nolan requires readers to confront the moral dilemmas inherent in humanitarian programs and situates children and birth mothers at the heart of Guatemala's political violence of the twentieth century. It is a book that will continue to leave its mark and generate important conversations for years to come.--Sarah Foss ""H-Net Reviews"" (8/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) Beautifully written...Full of stunning insights and revelations and narrated with grace and empathy, [this book] is essential reading for anyone interested in Latin American Cold War history, human rights, adoptions, and political violence.--Julie Gibbings ""NACLA Report on the Americas"" (4/2/2024 12:00:00 AM) Detailed and heartrending...uses years of research to show the way that a country destabilized by war can invite merciless profiteers to break apart families...and allow others overseas to reconfigure them according to their own desires.--John Washington ""Harper's"" (4/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) Heart-wrenching, heartfelt, and built through masterful and exceptionally difficult archival research and skillful fieldwork, Until I Find You situates Guatemalan adoptions in global history, explicates their inner workings, and traces the haunting human stories they entail. It is essential reading.--J. T. Way ""Hispanic American Historical Review"" (9/25/2024 12:00:00 AM) Moves fluidly between political context and personal stories...[Nolan] wants us to reckon with this cold reality; with these blurred boundaries of coercion and consent, legality and illegality. She urges us to question how an international marketplace for children, in which so many predatory players acted with impunity, was allowed to flourish.--Anna Temkin ""Times Literary Supplement"" (3/22/2024 12:00:00 AM) Nolan's stirring story showcases how fragmentation begat fragmentation in Guatemala...By unveiling these accounts, Nolan has offered the most urgent history of this dark period in Guatemala in at least a decade.--Ilan Palacios Avineri ""Latin Americanist"" (6/1/2024 12:00:00 AM) Traces the pull and push factors that drove the adoption of children from Guatemala between the 1970s and the first decade of this century...Meticulously reviewing archives of adoption files and court cases, Nolan finds that many adoptions involved fraudulent testimonies, suggesting that children were kidnapped or that their families were coerced into giving them up.--Richard Feinberg ""Foreign Affairs"" (4/23/2024 12:00:00 AM) A staggeringly brilliant work of the heart and the head. One can't read Nolan's story of forced adoptions in Guatemala and not come away both shaken and intellectually challenged. I've read many books on Cold War political violence--but never one that pulls you in, that makes you feel as well as think, as much as this tour de force.--Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Hugely ambitious. With painstaking research and deep sensitivity, Nolan addresses an important and little-studied topic, getting close to stories that are often shrouded in secrecy.--Betsy Konefal, author of For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960-1990 Important, compelling reading. Nolan has interviewed countless people, obtained access to adoption files, read the human rights reports, and sorted through the legal history. This will become a key, authoritative account of the deeply corrupt state of Guatemalan adoption from the 1970s to the 2000s.--Laura Briggs, author of Taking Children: A History of American Terror Like a dark historical fairy tale pulled from a bewitched archive, Until I Find You illuminates the Guatemalan international adoption trade's cruel corruption and heartrending complexities in a boldly original way. Nolan's meticulous research and her beautifully lucid, empathetic writing show how the seemingly benign event of the foreign adoption of an innocent child leaves behind an invisible trail of personal, economic, political, and essentially imperial horrors.--Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder and Monkey Boy The author has provided an essential history and analysis of forced adoption in Guatemala over a 40-year period and the socio-political dynamics that enabled this poor country to play such an infamous role in a tragic global story of human-trafficking. ...Until I Find You is a hard-hitting and disturbing insight into a dark corner of global capitalism, the profoundly racist attitudes of the Global North, and the most despicable of human vices.--Gavin O'Toole ""Latin American Review of Books"" (12/13/2023 12:00:00 AM) With a historian's eye and a journalist's pen, Nolan delves into the dark heart of Guatemalan adoption, a powerful story of state genocide, brutal economic and racial inequality, and a privatized, unregulated adoption market. Revealing the fuzzy boundaries between coercion and consent, legality and illegality, markets and trafficking, facts and rumor, she shows how the extraordinary violence of war gave way to the everyday violence of peacetime--and how children, especially Indigenous children, have been victims of both.--Nara Milanich, author of Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father

Author Information

Rachel Nolan is Contributing Editor at Harper’s Magazine and has written for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the Salvadoran investigative news outlet El Faro. She is Assistant Professor of International History at Boston University.

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