The Secrets We Keep

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Well. This was a surprise. A long time ago, I invited Donna Galanti, an ITW debut author,  to come chat on Jungle Red. She's very talented and a real powerhouse and a great pal, and I was delighted to introduce her to you all..

But today's blog I did not expect.

Because my new book THE WRONG GIRL deals with adoption and foster care and the possibility for deception and fraud--in THE WRONG GIRL, an adoption agency might be reuniting birth parents with the wrong children--I've been hearing from a lot of readers (and thank you so much) about their  searches for their birth parents or the children they gave up for adoption .

But true life is far more complicated and unpredictable than fiction could ever be. And that's why I am so honored--and so touched--about what dear Donna is sharing with us today.
  

A HUMAN ELEMENT
      by Donna Galanti

First, many thanks to the Jungle Reds for having me on today and super congrats to Hank on the release last week of THE WRONG GIRL!

The topics of Hank’s newest book–adoption, secrecy, and corruption–grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. You see, I am adopted and secrecy has been part of my real life tale, as well as my fictional tale, A HUMAN ELEMENT.

Donna Galanti

In my paranormal suspense novel three characters are connected by events. Laura Armstrong is adopted and raised by loving parents. Ben Fieldstone is abandoned to live a lonely existence in foster homes. X-10 is raised alone in a government facility, unloved as a science experiment. The common thread that connects them is that they grow up separated from their family wrapped in secrets–until those secrets come to light.  

These three similar characters grew up in different ways with different outcomes. It begs the questions: 

Can they overcome their genes through environment? Or will their environment be their downfall? And how did secrets change their lives?

And this got me thinking about the secrets in my own life, hidden and revealed, and how we may never really know someone or the stories behind their secrets.

Secrets kept. Secrets revealed. Secret doors opened, leaving you to wonder about the truth.

I was a black market baby.
My birth father killed himself.
My birth mother murdered her own mother.
Or none of the above.

My own life began in secrecy.

Secret #1: My birth mother didn’t know if I was a boy or girl. That’s how fast they took me from her.

Secret #2: The day my adoptive parents took me home from foster care they were instructed to cross the county line and wait by a cornfield for the social worker to hand me over to them. What small town secrets warranted this action?

Me as a foster child, on the right, with another foster child

Secret #3: An adoption agency worker on her last day before retirement flung privacy to the wind and handed over my records to my pleading birth mother. And so, at 18, I met my blood family for the first time.

Secret #4: For 40 years I believed my birth father died in a car accident. An innocent search one day for his name revealed a newspaper article detailing his suicide. The truth, kept from me my entire life by my adoptive parents and birth mother, was revealed–and confirmed upon question.

But could both of these “truths” be  lies?

Secret #5: Did my birth father really commit suicide? My birth mother shared her conspiracy theory for his murder. She believed his ex-wife and her husband, both police officers, staged his suicide to cash in his life insurance policy and collaborated with other law enforcement to cover it up. My own research led to the discovery of the lawsuit (taken all the way to the Supreme Court) brought against this couple over the questionable cashed-in policy and their actions on that fatal night.

It makes me wonder about this secret door. Which one holds the truth?

Secret #6: My birth mother whisked her aging mother secretly away to a nursing home in another state. When my birth mother was finally tracked down, she had disappeared leaving her own mother dead and cremated, her money taken–and with no evidence left behind of how she truly died.

Did my birth mother murder her own mother for money?

Sounds like a novel doesn’t it? One I may write someday. I guess the truth is stranger than fiction. Hank discovered that when a news tip gave her the idea for THE WRONG GIRL.

My father may have committed suicide. Or he may have been murdered by conspiracy.

My birth mother may have murdered her own mother. Or she may have not.

This doesn’t mean I will commit suicide or commit murder. Genes do not dictate who we are. We can overcome them. I am proof. My son is proof.

It does mean that adoption has played a large part in my life, and continues to play a part. The new novel I’m writing features a girl who never knew she was adopted, and what happens when secrets are revealed. Secrets also wind themselves through my short story collection, THE DARK INSIDE, featuring characters from A HUMAN ELEMENT and its forthcoming sequel. On sale now for only $.99!

Meanwhile, more secrets in my life continued to unfold.

This time with the family that raised me. After my adoptive mother died I discovered a locked-away restraining order she had against a man who later was convicted of two murders. She never told me or my father. In shock, we wondered about the truths this court document held. My father could only say “There are things about your mother will we never know.”

Can’t that be said of all of us? And at what point do we stop seeking the truth to live our life in peace?

TRUTH: In life, there will always be secrets. Some that may never be shared. And I’m okay with that. They do not dictate who we are. We can overcome them too–whether we discover the truth or not.

Did adoption play a role in your life? Did your family or someone you know hide secrets? Did you learn about a secret that changed your life?

*******************************

Donna Galanti is an International Thriller Writers Debut Author of the paranormal suspense novel A Human Element (Echelon Press). She’s lived from England as a child to Hawaii as a U.S. Navy photographer. If she couldn’t write she would bike, hike, and kayak every day. Donna lives with her family in an old farmhouse in Pennsylvania with lots of nooks, fireplaces, and stinkbugs but sadly no ghosts.

About A Human Element:
One by one, Laura Armstrong’s friends and adoptive family members are being murdered, and despite her unique healing powers, she can do nothing to stop it. The savage killer haunts her dreams, tormenting her with the promise that she is next. Determined to find the killer, she follows her visions to the site of a crashed meteorite–her hometown. There, she meets Ben Fieldstone, who seeks answers about his parents’ death the night the meteorite struck. In a race to stop a mad man, they unravel a frightening secret that binds them together. But the killer’s desire to destroy Laura face-to-face leads to a showdown that puts Laura and Ben’s emotional relationship and Laura’s pure spirit to the test. With the killer closing in, Laura discovers her destiny is linked to his and she has two choices–redeem him or kill him.

Praise for A Human Element:
“Be afraid. Be very afraid. And be utterly absorbed by this riveting debut that had me reading till the wee hours of the night. A thriller star is born. Don’t miss A Human Element.”  – M.J. Rose, international bestselling author

“A Human Element is an elegant and haunting first novel. Unrelenting, devious but full of heart.  Highly recommended.” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author
“Lyrical and creepy, Donna Galanti’s A Human Element tugs on our heartstrings and plucks the gut-strings of horror. This debut thriller author is a true storyteller, highly reminiscent of Dean Koontz.” -Dakota Banks, award winning author

Purchase A Human Element here:

Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/dg-the-Kindle

Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/dg-he-Nook
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/a-human-element/id562195009?mt=11&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Purchase The Dark Inside here: http://amzn.to/Xf1Prg

Connect with Donna here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/DonnaGalanti
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DonnaGalantiAuthor
Website: http://blog.donnagalanti.com/wp/

Searching for your BIrth Parents?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  For the past year, no, a little longer, I've been thinking about adoption, and foster care, and the bonds we have with our families and children. On the cover of THE WRONG GIRL (my new book that comes out tomorrow!) it says "What if you didn't know the truth about your own family?"

As a kid, I used to taunt my mother with "When my REAL mother comes and takes me away, you'll be sorry..." Sometimes my "real mother" was the queen of someplace, making me the long-lost princess who would--soon, I hoped ---be transported to some place where she didn't have to make her bed.

And,  thinking back, in grade school and high school, I don't think I knew anyone who was adopted. At least, no one who said so. (I was an outlier enough--in 1956, to have parents who were divorced was a cause for pity and a bit of ostracizing. (You don't have a father? Oh,gosh...)  Adoption was a mysterious and terrifying thing, back then 50 or 60 years ago,  something that happened to someone else.

And when a girl "got in trouble" and "went to visit her aunt"--well, enough said.

Either me or my sister...

But now of course, it's so different. I know many people who are adopted, and some who have looked for and located their birth parents. Whole websites and organizations are devoted to it.   Adoption in celebrity circles is almost de rigueur, and certainly being married is not a prerequisite, in many parts of society at least, for having a baby.  But still, but still. What makes our identity?

And as a reporter, I've done lots of stories about foster care...not only the incredible difficulties, but the stories of love and acceptance.

So  Reds, with THE WRONG GIRL and its themes of "What if you didn't know the truth about your own family?"--and more about that on pub day tomorrow!--do you have stories of adoption and birth parent searches?

LUCY BURDETTE: I can't wait for this book, Hank, sounds fascinating! It seems like the New York times has run a lot of articles recently about the failure of the foster care system. This is absolutely heartbreaking and these pieces always make me feel guilty that I'm not taking children in. Troubled teenagers, for example. Can you imagine the havoc that would wreak on your life? But how much is at stake…One of the best

books I've read involving foster case was THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS by Vanessa Diffenbach. Amazing descriptions of the homes the character survived and the meaning of family.

RHYS BOWEN: I'm also amazed how society has changed in its views on illegitimate babies. In my last Molly Murphy book, The Family Way, the story is all about what it's like to be pregnant and married, or pregnant and unmarried--literally a difference between life and death in those days.  Even when I was young there was really no choice about giving up a baby if you weren't married. I did know two girls who were adopted when I was growing up. Both with older adoptive parents who spoiled them horribly. And Hank, I also fantasized about my real parents coming for me one day! 

Yes, Sputnik

HALLIE EPHRON: We used to torture my little sister, telling her that she was adopted. Dropped in the yard by Sputnik (that's dating us). I know, it was mean.

More seriously, I don't know if I'd ever have started writing if I didn't know that my parents were writers and that I had the genes, even if I didn't have the disposition. Less thrilling is knowing I probably have a genetic predisposition to depression, bipolar illness, alcoholism, not to mention acute narcissism.

Hank is talking NOT knowing the truth about who your parents are. To be lied to would be a betrayal; to simply not know would be something else, and I think it depends on who you are whether it would be something that you'd need to find out.   

And I have read the book and loved it. It's fast, fun, at times scary, and very thoughtful on this topic.

(HANK: Oh, thank you, Hallie!)

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I knew my parents and still don't think I knew them, so what does that say? Too late now. Sometimes my sister and I felt like we'd been dropped into our family by aliens who wanted to learn about humanoid life forms. And they'd be coming back for us.

 Other than the aliens who didn't come to retrieve me, I have no personal stories of adoption. This summer I read a wonderful book called Orphan Train (edited by Hallie's editor, I think.) I'd been researching the orphan trains of the late 18th and early 19th century and this book was wonderful. Highly recommended.

(What were the orphan trains? - briefly, poor, orphaned or abandoned children , mostly from NY and Boston were shipped to the midwest to be adopted by farm families. Needless to say it didn't always work out.)

HALLIE: Ro's comment made me think about how many iconic children's stories are about orphaned kids. Cinderella, The Little Princess, James and the Giant Peach, Ann of Green Gables, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter...  

DEBORAH CROMBIE: So interesting about all the iconic orphan stories, Hallie!  I loved all of them! Maybe there is an inherent mystery in either not knowing where you came from, or in having lost parents. 


I have a friend of many years who was adopted (as was her older sister, but not from the same biological parents). My friend did as an adult try to contact her birth mother for health-related reasons, but her mother refused the contact. That must be crushing. 

But so many story possibilities...

And I have, I realized, in my last few books introduced an orphaned child who has, and will continue to have, a big part in the ongoing series.

We think this is Jonathan and his mom

HANK: Debs, that happens all the time. Can you even imagine...? And I do think that the fantasy of retrieval by aliens or royal families or even being called to school via message from an owl shows how intent we are on understanding where we came from. And we know that search doesn’t always have a happy ending.

How about you all? Stories of adoption, foster care, searching?  (And don’t forget I’m off on tour starting Wednesday! Check my website for the schedule—I’d adore to see our Jungle Red team on #HankonTour!)  

And a copy of the amazing Sue Grafton's W is for Wasted to one lucky commenter! Her book comes out tomorrow, too!