Easy & Interesting Reads For #BookTober

To Have And Not To Hold

About The Book:

When Lorri Antosz Benson, a 24-year-old successful producer for a groundbreaking national television show, finds herself in an impossible situation, she digs deep and faces the heartbreaking reality that the best choice for her beloved new baby is to be raised by someone else. To Have and Not to Hold is the poignant account of Lorri’s momentous decision to give her daughter up for adoption, the resulting heartache, and later, the unexpected joy of reconnecting with her daughter and her daughter’s adoptive mother. With agonizing yet heartwarming honesty, Lorri offers a profound look at a deep connection between two mothers that is born with the cry of a newborn daughter. What begins as a fragile, tenuous link develops into something dreams and miracles are made of - relationships that go to the soul, are meant to be, and are devoid of fear and possessiveness. To Have and Not to Hold holds much inspiration for any adoptive parent, adoptee, or first/birthparent, but it’s a story that anyone will find impossible to put down.

About The Author:

Lorri Antosz Benson is an award-winning television producer, writer, author, and former internationally syndicated columnist. Most notably, she worked for Donahue, the acclaimed show hosted by the legendary Phil Donahue, for fifteen years, eight of which were spent as Senior Producer. Lorri received two Emmy Awards and ten Emmy nominations for her work with Donahue, and was awarded the American Women in Radio and Television Commendation several times. Lorri also maintains a blog for empty nesters, Feathering My Empty Nest. She and her husband, Steve, reside in Santa Monica, CA. They have four children and five grandchildren.

Finding Family

About The Book:

Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA is the highly suspenseful account of an adoptee trying to reclaim the biological family denied him by sealed birth records. This fascinating quest, including the author’s landmark use of DNA testing, takes readers on an exhilarating roller-coaster ride and concludes with a twist that rivals anything Hollywood has to offer. In the vein of a classic mystery, Hill gathers the seemingly scant evidence surrounding the circumstances of his birth. As his resolve shores up, the author also avails himself of new friends, genealogists, the Internet, and the latest DNA tests in the new field of genetic genealogy. As he closes in on the truth of his ancestry, he is able to construct a living, breathing portrait of the young woman who was faced with the decision to forsake her rights to her child, and ultimately the man whose identity had remained hidden for decades. Finding Family offers guidance, insight, and motivation for anyone engaged in a similar mission, from ways to obtain information to the many networks that can facilitate adoption searches. The book includes a detailed guide to DNA and genetic genealogy and how they can produce irrefutable results in determining genetic connections and help adoptees bypass sealed records and similar stumbling blocks.

About The Author:

Richard Hill's groundbreaking use of genetic genealogy tests in adoption search was featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. In order to share his success secrets and tips with other adoptees and genealogists, Hill created an educational website, DNA-Testing-Adviser.com, which makes genetic genealogy understandable to all. Richard gives talks and interviews on DNA testing. As the unifying expert who bridges the fields of genetic genealogy and adoption search, he has become the go-to person for adoptees and others seeking to find lost relatives or confirm suspected relationships. The author has a BS in physics, an MBA, and more than thirty years of experience in marketing.

Changing Gears

About The Book:

What happens when a mother and her 16-year-old son drop everything to bike across the country? On the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, they struggle up hills in the pouring rain, they feel soreness in muscles they didn’t know they had, and they learn more about each other than they ever knew before. When licensed clinical therapist and self-proclaimed “reluctant adventurer” Leah Day felt herself drifting from her son, Oakley, she decided to make a drastic play to reconnect. In this memoir chronicling the journey of a lifetime, Leah and Oakley find that if they can push themselves to accomplish physically exhausting and emotionally taxing milestones on a bike, they are capable of anything!

About The Author:

Leah Day lives on Peaks Island in Maine with her husband, four children, and dog, Cricket. A licensed clinical therapist and former Outward Bound instructor, she now owns and operates Lighthouse Bikes in South Portland, Maine, and documents her outdoor adventures on her blog bikemum.com.

Going On Nine

About The Book:

A child swipes her mother’s ring, snatches her sister’s nightgown, and runs outside to play “bride.” She soon loses the ring, rips the gown, correctly assumes it’s about to rain daggers, and runs away from home to find a better family. What happens next is a summer-long journey in which Grace Townsend rides shotgun in a Plymouth Belvedere, hunkers in the back of a rattletrap vegetable truck, crawls into a crumbling tunnel, dresses up as a prom queen, and keeps vigil in the bedroom of a molestation victim. There are reasons why Grace remembers the summer of 1956 for the rest of her life. Those are just a few. Through the eyes of a child and the mature woman she becomes, we make the journey with Grace and discover important truths about life, equality, family, and the soul-searching quest for belonging.

About The Author:

Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in suburban St. Louis. She is the second of six children. She, like many children her age, enjoyed summer vacations unscheduled and unfettered. After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, she worked as a metro daily newspaper feature writer in Hannibal, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. In September of 2001, Catherine was in Manhattan to cover New York Fashion Week. At the first word of the terrorist attacks, she rushed to Ground Zero and filed award-winning eyewitness reports. An account of her reportage that day appears in Running Toward Danger. A front page of the newspaper edition containing one of her 9-11 dispatches is among those memorialized in Washington DC's Newseum. Her book-length account of her harrowing experiences that week has been accessioned into the State Historical Society of Missouri archives. Catherine is a board member of the Chicago-area TallGrass Writers Guild. She and her husband, Dennis, have two daughters. Their first grandchild, Lillian Leslie Gould, was born in June 2013. Catherine and Dennis divide their time between Chicago and Bonita Springs, Florida.

Find these, and many other great reads, on the Familius Website.

~Hayley

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