Patty's Journey: From Orphanage to Adoption and Reunion
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.86 (907 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0816628661 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 186 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-11-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Patty's Journey is a richly textured account of people struggling through the Great Depression and war years, but it also illuminates the customs and small victories of that era, often in surprising and humorous ways. In 1936, four-year-old Patty Pearson was taken from her parents and placed in the State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children in Owatonna, Minnesota. Although it provides a disturbing look at child-rearing practices in state orphanages at the time, it is ultimately a redemptive tale of one woman's bravery in facing her past - and moving ahead toward a future that included both her selves.. Through her late childhood and teen years Patty learned to negotiate the shoals of life as an adoptee - striving for full membership in the family, repressing her anger at being forbidden to discuss her past, wondering what became of her sister, brother, moth
Despite her adoptive family's well-meaning, if misguided, attempts to erase Norling's past, she retained both her toughness and her skepticism. But her observations of children, adults and finding one's self in the most changeable circumstances are what make this book an excellent addition to the many memoirs coming out this fall. A few months later, Norling, her older sister and baby brother were placed in Minnesota's Owatonna State Public School. "I nodded my head dumbly 'Good,' he said, apparently satisfied, 'then that will be your name from now on.'" In that moment, Patricia Ann Pearson was replaced by Donna Ruth Scott. There is refreshingly little self-pity?which doesn't mean that Norling isn't sharply aware of her own position and of the combination of shame and sentimentality that surrounde
A SMALL GIRL'S DETERMINATION Anne Salazar I adored this book about a little girl's determination to have as normal as life as she could (whatever normal means!). It is always interesting to me how much she, and children like her, love and adore their parents, and yet when the going gets tough for the parents they dump their kids, in this instance in an orphanage. I can hardly believe adults are this cruel, but some of them are. I realize the conditions of the Depression were terrible, but I have also read about many, many families who stayed together and somehow made do. Not here. (Read: Little Heathens by Mildren Armstrong Kalish.)Patty, soon to become Donna, is resilie. "Five Stars" according to Elaine Whelan. What a heart breaking true story. Alyssa A. Lappen said Important and enlightening. I've now read several nonfiction works by adults who were adopted as children and later reunited with their birth parents. Patty's Journey is very good.The book is well-written, though Donna Scott Nordling's prose is not nearly as compelling or literary in quality as that of Betty Jean Lifton's Twice Born. Nor does this book offer the same insight into an adopted child's sense of being different, and lost.Nevertheless, Nordling's is a very important story for the pain it exposes of children who were torn from their families by unfeeling courts making little or no attempt to keep the biological families together. She and her sibli