When something as big as adoption enters your life, it’s natural to want to write about it. Most people want to share the wisdom of what they have learned and save others from making the same mistakes they did. Unfortunately, some would-be authors just don’t have the skill or the talent to create readable prose, so many memoirs about adoption are just plain bad—-overwrought, poorly crafted, or worst of all, inaccurate.

This is not the case with Jan Waldron’s well-written and occasionally poetic book, "Giving Away Simone." Waldron is a birthmother from the late 1960s who had the unlucky distinction of being from a family where five generations of mothers abandoned or relinquished their children. (Her own mother had a mental breakdown after a divorce and abandoned her when she was 11.)

Waldron was just seventeen when she gave birth to her daughter Simone (renamed Rebecca by her adoptive family). Though a bright and capable young woman, she lacked confidence in her ability to parent, and she experienced external pressures to relinquish. It was an ambiguous situation, in which the "right" thing to do was not clear, and still is not.

That part of the tale is familiar, but this is by no means the typical birthmother story (though once you get to know the adoption world well, you begin to realize that few stories can be called typical). Still, Waldron’s experience contains a number of rather unusual factors:

• The adoption was not closed, as most adoptions from that era were. Her daughter’s new parents were people she knew fairly well—her high school art teacher and his wife.
• Her baby was not whisked away at birth. With the encouragement of other mothers on the hospital ward, she fought for and won the opportunity to see her baby and parent for a few weeks at the beginning of her motherhood. It was only a few weeks later that she entrusted her baby to the adoptive parents.
• Her brother visited his niece regularly from her birth on.
• The adoptive parents asked her to reenter her daughter’s life at age 11, and visits became regular.

However, other aspects of the story are much more common, such as:
• Family miscommunication, misunderstandings, and lack of support being factors leading to the relinquishment
• The pressure of having hopeful parents hovering over, ready to claim your child
• The severe emotional fallout of adoption
• The very difficult process of reunion, with all of its complex emotions

In many ways, Waldon’s story is similar to today’s open adoptions, especially the less successful ones. In fact, the book works best as a chronicle of a poorly-arranged open adoption, where contact is not continuous from birth, reunion occurs at a bad time, and people are constantly struggling to understand their roles or boundaries.

It is to the credit of Waldron, her daughter and the adoptive family that things eventually worked out. Still, Waldron refuses to take the rosy view of adoption. She does not hate the institution, but is tired of the all the romanticizing (“When will we stop selling the movie?”). Her attitude is justifiable--she has earned her cynicism. After you read her book, you may be provoked to think more deeply about adoption, too.

In a nutshell: I wouldn’t make this your only book about the birthmother experience, but it should certainly be among the titles you read.