Barbara Lloyd McMichael

“Found” — Jennifer Lauck
Seal Press — 272 pages — $24.95

Remember that whole nature or nurture debate? I thought I knew which side I favored until I finished reading Jennifer Lauck’s stunning new memoir, “Found,” which provokes reconsideration.

 

I have not read the Portland journalist’s previous memoirs, although “Blackbird” was a New York Times best-seller. But Lauck recaps some of those harrowing stories for this book, touching on her adoption as a newborn; on the death of both of her adoptive parents when she was very young; on her life as an adolescent, when she was shuttled from place to place (it’s hard to call any of those places “home”); and on her entry into adulthood, with its continuing pile-up of alienations and further losses.

 

“Found” is about Lauck’s quest to overcome her ingrained sense of displacement and to formulate her own sense of self.

 

It turned out that shirttail relatives of the dead adoptive parents — people who had promised to be Lauck’s guardians — had spent all of the money that had been intended for her college education. Despite their bad faith, Lauck works her way through college and earns her degree. She marries, secures employment as a television news reporter, and divorces.  

 

She moves and marries again and starts a family.
She pursues meditation.
She divorces again.
And she initiates a search for her birth mother. She hires a private investigator. She scours Internet sites. She contacts the alumni association

of the high school where she thinks her birth mother may have been a student.

 

But she runs into dead ends. Bureaucrats put up brick walls. For 10 years, she makes little headway in her search.

 

This was surely a difficult story to write, but it is an utterly riveting read. The pages of this book practically turn themselves as Lauck stumbles and falls and picks herself up and tries again. She writes with grit and humility and — remarkably — humor.

 

And when, after all those years, one incidental conversation yields one small clue that makes all of the necessary pieces come tumbling into place and tells Lauck who her mother is, it turns out that reunion and reconciliation are two different things.

 

But the title of this book is a tip-off — ultimately, Lauck does find some of the answers she has sought all her life. And she finds a kind of reassurance, as well.

 

“Love has always been in my heart, waiting for the right person to trip the code,” she writes.

 

This book focuses on a very personal quest but it also raises tough questions about the biological and sociological implications of adoption. In a thoughtful but provocative end note to the book, Lauck urges readers to consider prevailing policies concerning the care and disposition of children — and parents (especially mothers) — in crisis.

 

“Found” is a story about resilience in the face of loss. It is a book with a hopeful ending, but it certainly will leave readers pondering the many other untold stories out there, waiting somehow to be resolved.

 

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.