Family wanted : adoption stories

Family has always been fertile ground for writers. To the usual familial themes, adoption adds its own potent elements: mystery, luck, the questing for origins, the yearning for a child, the importance (or not) of blood ties, and fundamental questions about what it is to become a parent and a family.

AM Homes writes of being relentlessly tracked down by her birth mother, and Bernard Cornwell about being adopted by members of a repressive religious sect; Tama Janowitz comically describes meeting her Chinese daughter for the first time, and Martin Rowson reflects on encountering his surprisingly numerous long-lost siblings; Matthew Engel wrestles with international red tape and social workers in his bid to adopt a child and Emily Prager writes movingly about how her young daughter came to terms with being adopted; Jonathan Rendall falls for his birth mother and Paula Fox writes about the joy of being reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption decades before.

The pieces in "Family Wanted" reveal profound truths about identity, family, love and belonging.