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Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging
by Julie Ryan McGue
GENRE: nonfiction-memoir
PUBLICATION DATE: 05/11/2021
DESCRIPTION:
Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers―which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues.
Julie's search for her birth relatives spans years and involves a search agency, a PI, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist. By journey's end, what began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest―one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julie Ryan McGue is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. She writes about finding out who you are, where you belong and making sense of it. Her first memoir, Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging, released in May 2021, won multiple awards. Her work has appeared in the Story Circle Network Journal, Brevity Nonfiction Blog, Imprint News, Adoption.com, Lifetime Adoption Adoptive Families Blog, Adoption & Beyond, and Severance Magazine. Her personal essays have appeared in several anthologies. Julie's second book, a collection of essays, Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship (Muse Literary) released in November 2023. Her third book, a prequel to Twice a Daughter, will release in Feb. 2025.Julie splits her time between northwest Indiana and Sarasota, Florida.
REVIEWS:
Kirkus: “An engaging and endearing chronicle of a woman’s quest to find her origins.”
Story Circle: “Twice a Daughter is a testament to evolving social norms, eradicating the former shame of illicit pregnancy, and a recognition of family bonds.”
https://www.storycircle.org/book_review/twice-a-daughter-a-search-for-identity-family-and-belonging/
Julie Ryan McGue’s Twice a Daughter is an expertly written, finely paced and deeply moving narrative about the author’s search for her birth parents and the attendant medical history that she needed. There will be adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents who will identify with the challenges, the rewards and the complexities that McGue so skillfully and compassionately relates, but any reader will be interested in this very human well told story.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1599100286?source=email_share
COMPARATIVE FILM/BOOK:
Three Identical Strangers
CASTING:
Frances MacDormand or Mandy Moore would be great as twins: Julie and Jenny. Rene Russo as Jeanne Ryan, and Tim Matheson as Jack Ryan.
PRIMARY VENUES/LOCATIONS WITHIN THE BOOK:
Chicago and Hinsdale, IL, Wisconsin, Montana, and Michigan
BOOK EXCERPT:
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