An engaging, page-turning memoir that thoughtfully puts together the pieces of a family puzzle.
In this debut memoir, one man embarks on a nearly three-decade quest to find his biological family.
Hill details his extensive journey of self-discovery, and he tries to uncover the identity of his biological parents. When Hill was 18, he accidentally learned that he was adopted. Many years later, his adoptive father, on his deathbed, revealed some startling facts about Hill's biological family. The news didn’t unnerve Hill, but instead sparked his curiosity. He began investigating his true identity, with the hope of finding living blood relatives—a search that would last 26 years. His adopted mother had done her best to erase the adoption’s paper trail, and the author’s task was filled with dead ends, wrong turns and tedium. His research even stagnates for long periods in his life. But with the help of friends and advocates, he eventually uncovers his birth mother’s identity, and then his father’s. Hill’s objective was simply “to know the truth about my birth and I didn’t want to hurt anybody.” Although both his biological parents were deceased, Hill did find new family members, including a brother, a sister and multiple cousins, with whom he built long-lasting relationships. He also grew to have a newfound appreciation for the love his adopted parents gave him. Hill’s prose is clear and straightforward throughout, marked by a methodological tone that reflects his careers in science and marketing. Seamlessly and descriptively, he folds a decades-long process into a comprehensible narrative. His years of meticulous note taking translate into an inspiring story about his dedicated search for the truth.
An engaging, page-turning memoir that thoughtfully puts together the pieces of a family puzzle.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475190830
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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