More than just one woman’s search for information about the biological mother she believed had died in childbirth, this book explores the mind and feelings of an adopted child. Call Me Ella is a heartwarming and uplifting story about a young girl who considered her adoptive parents her “real parents,” yet wanted to know more. She wanted to know her roots. Her heritage. With a burning desire to have someone who “looked like her,” she couldn’t wait to marry and have children of her own. She had no idea that her twenty-four year search, which did not begin until after both of her parents had passed away, would involve Sopranos-like tales of organized crime, gambling, and infidelity.
When her friend gushed over how much her son’s graduation picture looked like her dad’s portrait, Joanie smiled. Her friend did not know she was adopted. Then she took another look at the two photos, sitting side by side on her mantel, almost identical. Could her adoptive father have been her birth father? Now, a year after Joanie’s mom had passed away, she set out to discover the truth behind her adoption.
Joanie grew up thinking she killed her mother. As a child, when her adoptive mom answered her question, “Where did I come from?” by saying her birth mother died in childbirth, she believed in her heart she killed the woman who gave her life. She kept asking her mom the same question, hoping to get a different answer. Maybe she’d learn her birth mother had been ill, that it wasn’t her fault she died. When Joanie finally got old enough to figure out it took two people, a man and a woman, to have a child, she asked a new question: “What happened to my birth father? Did he die too?” That’s when her mom shot her foot through the kitchen wall screaming, “Don’t ever ask me that again.” It took her years to realize why that question hit a nerve.
In New Jersey, when a baby is adopted, their original birth certificate is sealed, making it seem as if the child did not exist before the adoption. Joanie never even knew her birth mother’s last name until she discovered her adoption papers a week before her mom passed away. Unfortunately, when her mom died with her secrets intact, she thought she’d never learn about her ethnic background or medical history. She wasn’t ready to give up. She needed to know more. She needed to know the big secret that kept her mom from answering her questions. With determination and the unexpected help from a self-proclaimed “romantic” stranger, she set out to find her roots.
Call Me Ella is a memoir of love, family, loss and perseverance. It shows how we can work to achieve our happy endings.
