She Named You Donna - Julie Kerton

It's a January morning in 1976; Julie rips the hospital bracelet from her wrist and throws it across the room. As it lands, she doesn't know that the sound will echo through the years. But the story doesn't begin here. In a suburb north of Manhattan, Julie grows up on a block where children play outside from morning until dusk, as their mothers play bridge and smoke cigarettes, while their fathers take the 7:02 into the city. Her family looks like all the other families, except in Julie's family, babies are picked up, not delivered. Julie Kerton blends a story of coming of age with a tale of living on each side of the adoption triad; adopted child, birth mother and adoptive mother and tops it off with the despair of alcoholism and mental illness. In this candid memoir, Julie links love, loss, shame, secrets and belonging to the fragmented pieces deep within herself as she explores the origins of her identity, ultimately discovering what family really means.