Thank you for answering my millions of questions: Charles Nelson III, PhD, professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, and research director of Boston Children’s Hospital Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience; and Harold Grotevant, PhD, Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology and director of the Rudd Adoption Research Program at UMass Amherst.

For your devotion to improving the lives of former and current foster youth, thank you to Treehouse and the Mockingbird Society in Seattle, Washington, and to Amy Lemley and Deanne Pearn, who created California’s First Place for Youth. Thank you also to Phoenix Ashes: Former Foster Youth Voices community, for your brave commitment to making the truth known.

Thank you to my favorite social and adoption workers and foster and adoptive families, who shared inspiration, stories, and truth: Rebecca Frasier; Joellen Pinter; Lisa Hllavay; the Neuse family, Sarah, Alex, and Mac; Sarah Nelson and the Cargillova family; Litza Johnson and Bernadette; Paul Pierce; Joer Amirez; and DJ.

Thank you to the authors—and my dear friends—Catherine Nguyen, Caitlyn Flynn, Martha Brockenbrough, and Nicole Ching. And most especially to my sister, Christine Kiekhaefer, who introduced me to my daughter.

Heartfelt gratitude to the many generous people who shared their families’ experiences surviving the internment of Japanese Americans, especially the storytellers of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association and the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum; Delphine Hirasuna, author of The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942–1946; and Renee Tawa and Sheila Kern, for their reporting on the Manzanar Children’s Village, “Childhood Lost: The Orphans of Manzanar,” for the Los Angeles Times. Thank you to Mary Woodward, for your family and your beautiful book In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story.

For inspiration and accuracy, the docents at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California. Thank you to Connie Walker for educating me about Canada’s Sixties Scoop and residential schools, which used adoption to devastate indigenous lives. Deep gratitude to authenticity readers Nata Guterson and Celia Connor.

For help with Terry Johnson, thank you to Gretchen Landon, Dr. Julia Mulvaney, Dr. Evan Crocker, and the entire team at Mercer Island Veterinary Clinic. I love you all so much, and so do Henri and June and Henri’s left ear.

Love-filled gratitude to my librarians, especially Linda Johns of the Seattle Public Library, Sarah Abreu at MIHS, and the staff at the Bainbridge Public Library, my home and writing refuge.

Special thanks to Victoria Irwin and Karen Maeda Allman for immeasurable kindness.

Love and grateful devotion to the supportive early readers and hand-holders: my Café Verité coven and my Bainbridge writers, who gave me a new home: Dawn Simon, Jennifer Mann, and Suzanne Selfors. Thank you also to Bainbridge Island’s BARN for writing support and space.

Heartfelt gratitude for time, reading, and kind words to Deb Caletti, Jo Knowles, Martha Brockenbrough, Holly Cupala, Jeff Zentner, Kathleen Glasgow, and Joy McCullough.