Spitting Image

ISBN 978-1-7358805-0-1

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One bright summer afternoon on weekend errands with his mother, 10-year-old Ronald's faint suspicions that he is adopted are confirmed by his mother's careful, well-practiced announcement of the truth.  As a child whose appearance is close enough to that of his extended African-American adoptive family, he has always felt a part of them, but now things make a little more sense, and a 40-year odyssey of seeking his genetic truth is triggered. Traditional methods of corresponding with state and local agencies prove completely ineffective, but the confluence DNA testing, the internet superhighway and the explosion of new genealogy subcultures in social media in 2015 bursts open doors not only to his genetic origins, but to a very personal and enthralling melting pot spanning many generations, cultures, and epochs. The formative years of spiritual training by his Baptist Minister grandfather return to steady him as he is confronted by startling revelations of his birth-parents' past and his abandonment at a Detroit hospital shortly after birth. 

 

Told in 3 parts, the Foundling's memoir reveals the early events that form the worldview of an African-American male in turbulent pot-rebellion Detroit, the discovery of a close-knit very private paternal family who are descendants of early Georgia and South Carolina African-American women and the white men who owned them, and finally the late 19th-century immigration of Slovakian and German Protestants fleeing persecution and economic jeopardy into the coal mines of Pennsylvania and onto the Arsenal of Democracy, Detroit. Spitting Image is a sweeping adventure of American courage, perseverance and faith culminating in acceptance, gratitude and personal transformation.