Adoption Fiction

November is National Adoption Month, a month set aside to raise awareness about the urgent need for adoptive families for children and youth.  Here are ten novels that feature themes of adoption.

Annie's Truth by Beth Shriver - Annie Beiler seems to have it all--a loving family in a tight-knit Amish community and the affections of an attractive and respected young man. But when she learns that she was adopted after being found as an abandoned newborn, she sets out on a journey to find out who she is.
 Her father is strongly against her decision to leave, as it could mean Meidung, or excommunication from the community and even her family. But Annie knows she must find "the path that has her heart."
 As Annie's search brings her into the fast-paced world of modern life, she is confronted with all of the temptations she was warned of. Can she make her way back to the order and security of her family? Or will she remain an outsider, torn between her two worlds?  Book 1 of 3 in the Touch of Grace series

Another Woman's Daughter by Fiona Sussman - Set against the tumultuous background of apartheid South Africa, a powerful and moving debut about family, sacrifice, and discovering what it means to belong ... Celia Mphephu knows her place in the world. A black servant working in the white suburbs of 1960s Johannesburg, she's all too aware of her limitations. Nonetheless, she has found herself a comfortable corner: She has a job, can support her faraway family, and is raising her youngest child, Miriam. But as racial tensions explode, Celia's world shifts. Her employers decide to flee the political turmoil and move to England--and they ask to adopt Miriam and take her with them. Devastated at the prospect of losing her only daughter, yet unable to deny her child a safer and more promising future, Celia agrees, forever defining both their futures. As Celia fights against the shattering violence of her time, Miriam battles the quiet racism of England, struggling to find her place in a land to which she doesn't belong--until the call of her heritage inexorably draws her back to Africa to discover the truth behind her mother's choices and uncover a heartbreaking secret from long ago.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne - Cyril Avery is not a real Avery -- or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he?
Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from - and over his many years, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.

A Mother's Goodbye by Kate Hewitt - Heather is devastated. There's no way she can keep her baby. She can barely pay the bills as it is. But when she meets Grace, a wealthy, single career woman, who wants a baby more than anything, Heather believes she has found the perfect adoptive mother. As Grace and Heather's lives become entwined, they are tested to breaking point, though neither can deny the other's love for the child. But just when they think they are learning how to live with each other, they receive devastating news that turns their fragile world upside down. Will either mother know what is the right thing to do for the child they both love?

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain - Molly Arnette is very good at keeping secrets. She and her husband live in San Diego, where they hope to soon adopt a baby. But the process terrifies her. As the questions and background checks come one after another, Molly worries that the truth she's kept hidden about her North Carolina childhood will rise to the surface and destroy not only her chance at adoption, but her marriage as well. She ran away from her family twenty years ago after a shocking event left her devastated and distrustful of those she loved: Her mother, the woman who raised her and who Molly says is dead but is very much alive. Her birth mother, whose mysterious presence raised so many issues. The father she adored, whose death sent her running from the small community of Morrison Ridge. Now, as she tries to find a way to make peace with her past and embrace a future filled with promise, she discovers that even she doesn't know the truth of what happened in her family of pretenders.

The Secret Child by Kerry Fisher - Susie was forced to do something she will always regret: giving her baby son up for adoption. Everything that led to this child, this choice, had to be buried and forgotten. Her secret echoes down through the years, tainting everything it touches. Her husband wonders why his wife is so distant. Her daughters can't understand their changeable mother. Susie knows her past is pushing her family apart, and the guilt is eating her up, but she can't escape the longing for her lost son. No-one but Susie knows the whole story, and when her daughters discover a piece of the puzzle, she must face the question she has struggled with for most of her life: Would the truth bring them back together, or break them?

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda -  On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl. But in a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son.
Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to adopt a child after making the wrenching discovery that she will never have one of her own. When she and her husband, Krishnan, see a photo of the baby with the gold-flecked eyes from a Mumbai orphanage, they are overwhelmed with emotion. Somer knows life will change with the adoption but is convinced that the love they already feel will overcome all obstacles.

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley - Maia D'Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, 'Atlantis'--a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva--having been told that their beloved father, who adopted them all as babies, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage--a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of her story and its beginnings.  Book 1 of 6 in the Seven Sisters series

The Silver Music Box by Mina Baites - A captivating cross-generational novel from German author Mina Baites about a Jewish family divided by World War II and an inheritance with the power to bring them back together. 1914. For Paul, with love. Jewish silversmith Johann Blumenthal engraved those words on his most exquisite creation, a singing filigree bird inside a tiny ornamented box. He crafted this treasure for his young son before leaving to fight in a terrible war to honor his beloved country--a country that would soon turn against his own family. A half century later, Londoner Lilian Morrison inherits the box after the death of her parents. Though the silver is tarnished and dented, this much-loved treasure is also a link to an astonishing past. With the keepsake is a letter from Lilian's mother, telling her daughter for the first time that she was adopted. Too young to remember, Lilian was rescued from a Germany in the grips of the Holocaust. Now only she can trace what happened to a family who scattered to the reaches of the world, a family forced to choose between their heritage and their dreams for the future.  Book 1 of 2 in the Silver Music Box series 

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See - Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate—the first automobile any of them have seen—and a stranger arrives.
In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. In her biggest seller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, See introduced the Yao people to her readers. Here she shares the customs of another Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha, whose world will soon change . Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates for the stranger and is among the first to reject the rules that have shaped her existence. When she has a baby outside of wedlock, rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city.
After mother and daughter have gone their separate ways, Li-yan slowly emerges from the security and insularity of her village to encounter modern life while Haley grows up a privileged and well-loved California girl. Despite Haley’s happy home life, she wonders about her origins; and Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. They both search for and find answers in the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for generations.

Midwives in Fiction

September 29th through October 5th is National Midwifery Week.  Here are ten novels that feature midwives as characters.

The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark & Leslie Gould - A dusty carved box containing two locks of hair and a century-old letter regarding property in Switzerland, and a burning desire to learn about her biological family lead nurse-midwife Lexie Jaeger from her home in Oregon to the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country. There she meets Marta Bayer, a mysterious lay-midwife who desperately needs help after an Amish client and her baby die.
Lexie steps in to assume Marta's patient load even as she continues the search for her birth family, and from her patients she learns the true meaning of the Pennsylvania Dutch word demut, which means "to let be" as she changes from a woman who wants to control everything to a woman who depends on God.  Book 1 of 5 in the Women of Lancaster County series

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison - In the aftermath of a plague that has decimated the world population, the unnamed midwife confronts a new reality in which there may be no place for her. Indeed, there may be no place for any woman except at the end of a chain. A raducak rearrangement is underway. With one woman left for every ten men, the landscape that the midwife travels is fraught with danger. She must reach safety-- but is it safer to go it alone or take a chance on humanity? The friends shw makes along the way force her to choose what's more important. Civilization stirs from the ruins, taking new and experimental forms. The midwife must help a new world come into being, but birth is always dangerous& and what comes of it is beyond anyones control. Book 1 of 3 in the Road to Nowhere series

The German Midwife by Mandy Robotham - Germany, 1944. A prisoner in the camps, Anke Hoff is doing what she can to keep her pregnant campmates and their newborns alive.But when Anke's work is noticed, she is chosen for a task more dangerous than she could ever have imagined. Eva Braun is pregnant with the F hrer's child, and Anke is assigned as her midwife. Before long, Anke is faced with an impossible choice. Does she serve the Reich she loathes and keep the baby alive? Or does she sacrifice an innocent child for the good of a broken world?

The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman - A remarkable new voice in American fiction enchants readers with a moving and uplifting novel that celebrates the miracle of life. In The Midwife of Hope River, first-time novelist Patricia Harmon transports us to poverty stricken Appalachia during the Great Depression years of the 1930s and introduces us to a truly unforgettable heroine. Patience Murphy, a midwife struggling against disease, poverty, and prejudice--and her own haunting past--is a strong and endearing character that fans of the books of Ami McKay and Diane Chamberlain will take into their hearts, as she courageously attempts to bring new light, and life, into an otherwise cruel world. Book 1 of 3 in the Hope River series

The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain - Dear Anna,
What I have to tell you is difficult to write, but I know it will be far more difficult for you to hear, and I'm so sorry...
The unfinished letter is the only clue Tara and Emerson have to the reason behind their close friend Noelle's suicide. Everything they knew about Noelle--her calling as a midwife, her passion for causes, her love for her friends and family--described a woman who embraced life.
Yet there was so much they didn't know.
With the discovery of the letter and its heartbreaking secret, Noelle's friends begin to uncover the truth about this complex woman who touched each of their lives--and the life of a desperate stranger--with love and betrayal, compassion and deceit.

The Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard - On a dark night in 1775, Lizzie Boylston is awakened by the sound of cannons. From a hill south of Boston, she watches as fires burn in Charlestown, in a battle that she soon discovers has claimed her husband's life.
Alone in a new town, Lizzie grieves privately but takes comfort in her deepening friendship with Abigail Adams. Soon, word spreads of Lizzie's extraordinary midwifery and healing skills, and she begins to channel her grief into caring for those who need her. But when two traveling patriots are poisoned, Lizzie finds herself with far more complicated matters on her hands - she suspects a political plot intended to harm Abigail and her family. Determined to uncover the truth, Lizzie becomes entangled in a conspiracy that could not only destroy her livelihood - and her chance at finding love again - but also lead to the downfall of a new nation. Book 1 of 3 in the Midwife series

The Midwife's Tale by Delia Parr - Martha Cade comes from a long line of midwives who have served the families of Trinity, Pennsylvania, for generations. A widow with two grown children, she's hopeful that her daughter will follow in her footsteps, but when Victoria runs off, Martha's world is shattered. Worse, a new doctor has arrived in town, threatening her job, and she can't remember a time when her faith has been tested more. Still determined to do the work she knows God intended for her, Martha is unprepared for all that waits ahead. Whether it's trying to stop a town scandal, mending broken relationships, or feeling the first whispers of an unexpected romance, she faces every trial and every opportunity with hope and faith. Book 1 of 3 in the At Home in Trinity series

Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson - An epic love story moving from England to India, about the forbidden love between a young Indian doctor and an English midwife. Oxfordshire, 1947. Kit Smallwood, hiding a painful secret and exhausted from nursing soldiers during the Second World War, escapes to Wickam Farm where her friend is setting up a charity sending midwives to the Moonstone Home in South India. Then Kit meets Anto, an Indian doctor finishing his medical training at Oxford. But Kit's light skinned mother is in fact Anglo-Indian with secrets of her own, and Anto is everything she does not want for her daughter. Despite the threat of estrangement, Kit is excited for the future, hungry for adventure, and deeply in love. She and Anto secretly marry and set off for South India--where Kit plans to run the maternity hospital she's helped from afar. But Kit's life in India does not turn out as she imagined. Anto's large, traditional family wanted him to marry an Indian bride and find it hard to accept Kit. Their relationship under immense strain, Kit's job is also fraught with tension as they both face a newly independent India, where riots have left millions dead and there is deep-rooted suspicion of the English. In a rapidly changing world, Kit's naiveté is to land her in a frightening and dangerous situation.

My Notorious Life by Kate Manning - In vivid prose, Axie recounts how she is forcibly separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor, and how she and her husband parlay the sale of a few bottles of "Lunar Tablets for Female Complaint" into a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women's reproductive rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, amassing wealth while learning over and over never to trust a man who says "trust me."
When her services attract outraged headlines, Axie finds herself on a collision course with a crusading official--Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It will take all of Axie's cunning and power to outwit him in the fight to preserve her freedom and everything she holds dear.
Inspired by the true history of an infamous female physician who was once called "the Wickedest Woman in New York," My Notorious Life is a mystery, a family saga, a love story, and an exquisitely detailed portrait of nineteenth-century America. Axie Muldoon's inimitable voice brings the past alive, and her story haunts and enlightens the present.

Treasured Grace by Tracie Peterson - Grace Martindale has known more than her share of hardship. After her parents died, raising her two younger sisters became her responsibility. A hasty marriage to a minister who is heading to the untamed West seemed like an opportunity for a fresh start, but a cholera outbreak along the wagon trail has left Grace a widow in a very precarious position. Having learned natural remedies and midwifery from her mother, Grace seeks an opportunity to use her skills for the benefit of others. So when she and her sisters arrive at the Whitman mission in "Oregon Country," she decides to stay rather than push on. With the help of Alex Armistead, a French-American fur trapper, Grace begins to provide care for her neighbors, including some of the native populace. But not everyone welcomes her skills--or her presence--and soon Grace finds herself and those she loves in more danger than she imagined possible. Book 1 of 3 in the Heart of the Frontier series 

Nurses in Fiction

Today is National Certified Nurses Day!  Here are 10 novels that have nurses in them.

The Fire by Night by Teresa Messineo - In war-torn France, Jo McMahon, an Italian-Irish girl from the tenements of Brooklyn, tends to six seriously wounded soldiers in a makeshift medical unit. Enemy bombs have destroyed her hospital convoy, and now Jo singlehandedly struggles to keep her patients and herself alive in a cramped and freezing tent close to German troops. There is a growing tenderness between her and one of her patients, a Scottish officer, but Jo's heart is seared by the pain of all she has lost and seen. Nearing her breaking point, she fights to hold on to joyful memories of the past, to the times she shared with her best friend, Kay, whom she met in nursing school. Half a world away in the Pacific, Kay is trapped in a squalid Japanese POW camp in Manila, one of thousands of Allied men, women, and children whose fates rest in the hands of a sadistic enemy. Far from the familiar safety of the small Pennsylvania coal town of her childhood, Kay clings to memories of her happy days posted in Hawaii, and the handsome flyer who swept her off her feet in the weeks before Pearl Harbor. Surrounded by cruelty and death, Kay battles to maintain her sanity and save lives as best she can . . . and live to see her beloved friend Jo once more. When the conflict at last comes to an end, Jo and Kay discover that to achieve their own peace, they must find their placeand the hope of lovein a world that's forever changed. With rich, superbly researched detail, Teresa Messineo's thrilling novel brings to life the pain and uncertainty of war and the sustaining power of love and friendship, and illuminates the lives of the women who risked everything to save others during a horrifying time. 

A Pledge of Silence by Flora Solomon - When Margie Bauer joins the Army Nurse Corps in 1941, she is delighted to be assigned to Manila--the Pearl of the Orient. Though rumors of war circulate, she feels safe--the island is fortified, the airbases are ample, and the Filipino troops are well-trained.
But on December 8, 1941, her dreamworld shatters. Captured by the invading Japanese, Margie ends up interned at Santa Tomas, an infamous prison camp. There, for the next three years, while enduring brutality and starvation, her bravery, resourcefulness, and faith are tested and her life forever changed.
At once an epic tale of a nation at war and the deeply personal story of one woman's journey through hell, A Pledge of Silence vividly illustrates the sacrifices the Greatest Generation made for their country, and the price they continued to pay long after the war was over.

Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax - 2029: In Japan, a historically mono-cultural nation, childbirth rates are at a critical low and the elderly are living increasingly long lives. This population crisis has precipitated a mass immigration of foreign medical workers from all over Asia--as well as the development of refined artificial intelligence to step in where humans fall short. In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse who has been working in Japan for the last five years, is the caretaker for Sayoko Itou, an intensely private woman about to turn 100 years old. Angelica is a dedicated nurse, working night and day to keep her paperwork in order, obey the strict labor laws for foreign nationals, study for her ongoing proficiency exams, and most of all keep her demanding client happy. But one day Sayoko receives a present from her son: a cutting-edge robot caretaker that will educate itself to anticipate Sayoko's every need. Angelica wonders if she is about to be forced out of her much-needed job by an inanimate object--one with a preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it. While Angelica is fighting back against the AI with all of her resources, Sayoko is becoming more and more attached to the machine. The old woman is hiding many secrets of her own--and maybe now she's too old to want to keep them anymore. In a tour de force tapestry of science fiction and historical fiction, Andromeda Romano-Lax presents a story set in Japan and Taiwan that spans a century of empire, conquest, progress, and destruction. Plum Rains elegantly broaches such important contemporary conversations as immigration, the intersection of labor and technology, the ecological fate of our planet and the future of its children. 

The Stolen Marriage by Diane Chamberlain - In 1944, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess's new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she's trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out. The people of Hickory love and respect Henry and see Tess as an outsider, treating her with suspicion and disdain, especially after one of the town's prominent citizens dies in a terrible accident and Tess is blamed. Tess suspects people are talking about her, plotting behind her back, and following her as she walks around town. What does everyone know about Henry that she does not? Feeling alone and adrift, Tess turns to the one person who seems to understand her, a local medium who gives her hope but seems to know more than he's letting on. When a sudden polio epidemic strikes the town, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital. Tess, who has a nursing degree, bucks Henry's wishes and begins to work at the hospital, finding meaning in nursing the young victims. Yet at home, Henry's actions grow more alarming by the day. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle her husband's mysterious behavior and save her own life? 

Time of Death by Lucy Kerr - Its been twelve years since ER nurse Frankie Stapleton fled the quiet banks of Stillwater, but with her sisters pregnancy taking a dangerous turn and a string of failed relationships in Chicago hanging over her, Frankie is backand hoping to put the past behind her. Within minutes of arriving at Stillwater General Hospital however, she ends up saving a mans life, only to have him turn up dead hours later and the hospital blames Frankie. Her instincts say Clem Jensen didnt die of natural causes, but the more she digs, the more she discovers too many suspects, a few surprising allies, and some hard truths about the first man she ever lovedand left. Now the boy she once knew is a skeptical sheriffs deputy, her family's hardware store is in jeopardy, and the rift between Frankie and her loved ones is deeper than ever. With her careerand futureon life support, Frankie must catch a killer, clear her name, and heal the wounds of the past in Lucy Kerrs enthralling mystery debut, Time of Death.  Book 1 of 2 in the Stillwater General Mysteries

To Everything a Season by Lauraine Snelling - Trygve Knutson is devoted to his family and his community. With his job on the construction crew, he is helping to build a future for the North Dakota town of Blessing. Though he loves his home, he sometimes dreams of other horizons--especially since meeting Miriam Hastings.
Miriam is in Blessing to get practical training to become an accredited nurse. She's been promised a position in the Chicago women's hospital that will enable her to support her siblings and her ailing mother. Although eager to return to her family, Miriam is surprised to find how much she enjoys the small town of Blessing. And her growing attachment to Trygve soon has her questioning a future she always considered set in stone.
When a family emergency calls Miriam home sooner than planned, will she find a way to return? If not, will it mean losing Trygve--and her chance at love--for good?  Book 1 of 4 in the Songs of Blessing series

Trauma Plan by Candace Calvert - Sidelined by injuries from a vicious assault, chaplain Riley Hale is determined to return to her former duties as an ER nurse. But how can she show she's competent when the hospital won't let her attempt even simple tasks? Determined to prove herself, Riley volunteers at a controversial urban free clinic despite her fears about the maverick doctor in charge.Dr. Jack Travis defends his clinic like he's commander of the Alamo. He'll fight the community's efforts to shut its doors, even if he must use Riley Hale's influential family name to make it happen.As Riley strives to regain her skills, Jack finds that she shares his compassion--and stirs his lonely heart. Riley senses that beneath Jack's rough exterior is a man she can believe in. But when clinic protests escalate and questions surface about his past, Jack goes into battle mode and Riley wonders if it's dangerous to trust him with her heart.  Book 1 of 3 in the Grace Medical series

We Are All Made of Stars by Rowan Coleman - Hospice nurse Stella prefers the night shift after Afghanistan left her veteran husband a changed man, haunted at night by memories he can't bring himself to share. Writing final letters for her hospice patients to their loved ones gives Stella the chance to help others communicate as she cannot. She only has one rule: she mails the letter only once her patient is no longer alive. When she meets a patient with a chance at redemption, she finds herself torn between respecting a dying woman's wishes and reuniting her with the son she abandoned years ago. 

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason - Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives--at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains--he discovers a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains. But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon's scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever. 

With Love, Wherever You Are by Dandi Daley Mackall - Everyone knows that war romances never last . . .After a whirlwind romance and wedding, Helen Eberhart Daley, an army nurse, and Lieutenant Frank Daley, M.D. are sent to the front lines of Europe with only letters to connect them for months at a time.Surrounded by danger and desperately wounded patients, they soon find that only the war seems real--and their marriage more and more like a distant dream. If they make it through the war, will their marriage survive?Based on the incredible true love story, With Love, Wherever You Are is an adult novel from beloved children's author Dandi Daley Mackall.