Ithaka: a Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found

Saffian’s birth parents made contact with her via telephone a month before her 24th birthday. She wasn’t prepared for that. What follows is the three year journey to her becoming prepared to meet with them, and her three biological siblings.

While I am drawn to books about adoption, being simultaneously outside and inside, and identity, this memoir left me a little flat. It’s about 100 pages too long, and often too personal. This is the therapy version. Saffian is self-aware and a fine writer. I suspect I would have enjoyed the version she wrote ten years later. Still and all, I’m sure this book has its audience of birth parents and adoptees, for whom it is likely a powerful and resonant work.