I found this book through Bas Bleu mail order catalogue, a source for off-beat books and gift items. It is also available at Target and through Amazon. Anyone who has searched for family through DNA testing will surely find this story interesting and informative, and anyone with adoption connections, or an interest in genealogy, will want to add it to their collection. It’s the author’s own story, not just a how-to book, and it reads like a mystery novel.

Richard Hill has become a genetic genealogist, gradually, through his own more than 50-year search for the identity of his birth parents. He is the founder of DNA-Testing-Adviser.com. Many persons in the American Adoption Congress know him. His story began in 1964, shortly after he graduated from high school, when his new doctor inadvertently revealed that Richard was adopted. The doctor assumed he knew. In fact, he’d never had a clue. He grew up as an only child with loving parents and had no memory of ever being told he was adopted. He had briefly wondered why he had brown eyes when both parents had distinctly blue eyes, but otherwise had never questioned his background. When the doctor asked him, “How do you feel about being adopted?” he was stunned. He decided not to ask his parents about it, since they had never discussed it. He thought perhaps they would bring it up when he turned 21, but that did not happen.

He went off to college and got a B.S. in physics in 1968, immediately got married, and moved from Michigan to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to work at what is now Los Alamos National Laboratory. This gave him an occupational deferment from the military, a big thing in 1968. He told his wife he’d learned he was adopted but knew nothing of why, or how, or who his birth parents were, and neither of them brought it up with his adoptive parents. Five years later, they had a child and moved back to Michigan for graduate school. Richard’s father had had a heart attack while Richard was still in college and was advised not to go to New Mexico to visit because of the altitude. Then, in 1977, he had a stroke, resulting in paralysis. In 1978, he told Richard of his adoption, and that it was not through an agency, but that the birth mother lived with them the last months of her pregnancy, that her family knew friends of theirs. He also said Richard’s birth mother, Jackie, had died in a car wreck not long after he was born, and that she had another son, two years older, from her previous marriage. He thought that Richard ought to try to locate this half-brother and contact him.

In 1978, the idea of searching for birth parents was new and not easy to do, and not approved of by most of society. His adoptive mother did not know her husband had revealed Richard’s adoption to him. Richard and his wife had just had twins, in addition to their first daughter. He thought about searching, but had no time, between work and family, knew nothing of how to search, nor anyone who had searched. Then, in 1981, his wife’s cousin revealed that she was searching for her relinquished son, who was turning eighteen. Learning of Richard’s adoption and birth brother, she urged him to search, and she and Richard’s wife, Pat, kept after him to search. He found a search and support group, and spent the next 30 years, off and on, searching for his birth mother, birth father, siblings and cousins, with more unexpected twists and turns than he could ever have imagined at the outset. He had his birth mother’s given name and at least one of her last names, but it turned out to be much more complicated than that.

The book reads like a mystery novel/travelogue, as he goes all over in search of the real identity of his birth father, and details of both birth parents’ lives. It is not a fiction novel, however; it’s absolutely true, full of surprises right up to the end, as search methods, including DNA testing, have continued to develop and have become more accurate. He did eventually learn exactly who his birth father was, and who were his half-siblings, and who were his cousins.

This story is a real adventure, yet also contains a lot of detailed information on search and testing, how to go about both ethically, and how the author’s thoughts and emotions kept changing as he found out new information, and again as some of it proved wrong. This book might keep the reader up late, reading, hoping the author finds his information. At the end, there is a bonus guide to DNA testing, which might be helpful to many readers. Since the book was published in 2017, it’s still up to date, although new developments in DNA testing continue to be available.

Had this book been published by a major company, it would have been a bestseller. It is well worth searching for, as noted above. It’s worth reading twice to get all the details straight, and it will certainly convince the reader of how important it is to have adoption/relinquishment records available to those who search, whether they are adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, or descendants. It is ironic that the author’s adoption took place in Michigan, where countless millions of dollars and thousands of hours of state legislature’s time, have been spent in trying to keep the adoption records closed. Richard Hill’s search efforts show that secrets will always come out eventually, because searchers are persistent, and everyone deserves to know who they really are.