I Must Have Wandered

​​I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls - A Quest for the ) I m hybrid memoir of vignettes, letters, fragments, and photos in which Mary Ellen tells stories of her relinquishment at birth in post-WWII South Carolina and her closed adoption a year later by an Air Force couple. We travel with the author In her lyrical prose from her 1950s childhood, family transience, and separations. The subconscious grief of severance from her natural mother and family heightens her anxiety through the turbulent ’60s, as she struggles with her intelligence-officer adoptive dad’s frequent absences, his duty of secrecy, and his strict discipline. She awakens, at age forty, to the harm of identity bewilderment. Chipping at the barrier of State sealed birth records with the help of adoptee advocates she embarks on a successful quest for her natural mother. Decades later, she reaps the rewards of the internet, and with DNA testing, finds a wealth of family, her heritage, and her true identity. Knowing her origin, she may reconcile with the loss and privilege of the past. (This is an abridged 2nd edition, bibliography and resources of the 1st ed. are excluded.)