Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA Richard Hill

Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA

Richard Hill

List $15.00

Trade paperback 260 pages Also available in Kindle edition

ISBN-10: 1475190832 
ISBN-13: 978-1475190830

Richard Hill’s life story reads like a novel although it is an autobiography.  The accidental admission from Richard’s doctor which reveals that Richard is adopted, starts him off on a journey that will take years to complete.   Richard discusses the complex loyalties, yearnings, and thoughts that he went through before finally deciding to search for his birth parents.  The quagmire of misinformation began with a few falsehoods on his original birth certificate and slowed him down but ultimately he was able to reach his goal of learning who his parents were and to find siblings and extended family. 

At first, when the doctor revealed his adoption, Richard is reluctant to disturb his adoptive parents and also feels torn between loyalty and shock so he chooses not to reveal that the doctor told him.  Finally on his adoptive father’s deathbed, his father urges him to search for his birth parents.  Richard still doesn’t reveal to his adoptive mother that he know he is adopted.  It takes some time and some coming to terms with his own identity in his new family with a wife and child to begin thinking more seriously about searching. 

He runs into the roadblocks that adoptees find when searching for their birth records.  A stranger can do genealogical research and get more information than an adoptee searching for his own roots. 

Some of the techniques he used to confirm his birth relatives are the tried and true methods adoptees have been using for decades while others are fairly new and  can be a useful tool for other adoptees to find their families or at least find out more about their heritage.  Richard includes information on the DNA services he used both to rule out and to verify possible family members.

Richard’s story is very intriguing to me because some of my extended family members are adopted and I have seen the struggles they have gone through in trying to find information on their birth parents.   Even though each adoptees story is unique, there are some common struggles and this book gives both encouragement and some steps that an adoptee might be able to take in their own search.


 Reviewer for Bookpleasures.com