No Names to Be Given by Julia Brewer Daily

 

What is your favorite novel or movie about adoption or featuring an adoptee?

Three young women meet in 1965 at a maternity home hospital.  All three are from different backgrounds, but they all share one thing, babies that must remain hidden.  As the years go by and their lives move on, will they ever be able to really put behind the secrets from their past?

 I found No Names to be Given to be a riveting novel.  Sandra, Faith, and Becca all led fascinating lives.  The novel was told from their three points of views, with later points of views of their children added into the novel.  The story started with their young adult lives, how they became pregnant, life at the maternity home hospital, and then their lives afterwards.  I enjoyed it all, although I wish there would have been more on the stay at the hospital and how the three became friends.  There was also intrigue in the novel when the three women start to receive mysterious letters and their secrets are threatened to be exposed.  I enjoyed it and this novel was a real page turner.

I was also intrigued to learn at the end of the novel that the author, Julia Brewer Daily, was herself born in a maternity hospital in New Orleans.  She had pictures of her life growing up as well and it stated that she searched and was able to find her birth parents.  I was fascinated.

Favorite Quotes:

“Although we are from different walks of life, we have bonded in a way we might never have in the outside world.”

“They had no mothers to hold them, no names to be given.”

“Adoption is a two-sided coin – heartbreak and loss for the birth mother, joy and elation for the adoptive mother.”

Overall, No Names to be Given is a captivating look into maternity hospitals in the 1960s and how they impacted the lives of mothers and children for decades.

Book Source: Review Copy from Admission Press as a part of the TLC Book Tour.  For more stops on this tour, check out this link.

Check out my Instagram Account for a chance to win a copy of this novel.  Hurry as the giveaway ends on September 4th!

Information from the Publisher:

“A gorgeous, thrilling, and important novel! These strong women will capture your heart.”-Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas

1965. Sandy runs away from home to escape her mother’s abusive boyfriend. Becca falls in love with the wrong man. And Faith suffers a devastating attack. With no support and no other options, these three young, unwed women meet at a maternity home hospital in New Orleans where they are expected to relinquish their babies and return home as if nothing transpired.

But such a life-altering event can never be forgotten, and no secret remains buried forever. Twenty-five years later, the women are reunited by a blackmailer, who threatens to expose their secrets and destroy the lives they’ve built. That shattering revelation would shake their very foundations-and reverberate all the way to the White House.

Told from the three women’s perspectives, this mesmerizing story is based on actual experiences of women in the 1960s who found themselves pregnant but unmarried, pressured by family and society to make horrific decisions. How that inconceivable act changed women forever is the story of No Names to Be Given, a heartbreaking but uplifting novel of family and redemption.

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