Surrender: A Memoir of Nature, Nurture, and Love is beautifully-written, engrossing, and emotional journey through a woman’s search for her own identity. Throughout the memoir, Ms. MacDonald’s choices have rippling effects on herself and her family. Adopted at birth, MacDonald has an adoptive mother who tells her she’s a special child, chosen to be their daughter. These words fail to satisfy MacDonald’s longing for her roots. Her parents’ divorce leads her to find solace in her high school sweetheart. Unfortunately, a sixteen-year-old girl lacks the emotional or mental capacity to understand future consequences. When she becomes pregnant, she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in Arizona where she hides out for the rest of her pregnancy and gives up her son for adoption. Eventually, pregnant again by the same sweetheart, she marries him.
Surrender is the compelling story of MacDonald’s search for herself, her family history, and the son she gave up. As a woman who adopted a child, I fully understand part of this journey. How much do you tell a child about their past? Their family? In my son, I often search for what is his underlying nature and what I contributed to him in terms of nature.
This book would be well read in the company of the novel, The Sound Between the Notes, by Barbara Linn Probst. Both deal with the feelings tied up in their adoption, their search for their families, and for themselves.
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