Customer Reviews

Beneath a Tall Tree

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If "beneath a tall tree" doesn't tug at your heart and bring tears to your eyes, go see your doctor for a checkup. Strauss bares her soul in this fascinating adventure about her life. Besides being enormously helpful to adoptees, it provides a deep, raw look into the mindset of an adoptee. Her fluid style makes this an easy read.

I am an adoptee and I'm currently in a stage of my life where I'm becoming more curious to find out about my birthmother and my background. I was kind of scared and didn't really know where to start, but this book really helped me to realize that I CAN do something about it and that it's really nothing to be scared of. It gave me the perspective of the birthmother as well, wanting to know about the daughter she gave up. I have a feeling that when the time comes to contact my birthmother, she'll be more receptive than not - something I was very unsure of before I read this book. Jean Strauss and her book have kind of helped me to get the ball rolling and start seriously thinking about contacting my birthmother.

Having recently been involved in a reunion with a sister that we did not know existed, this book (as well as other Jean Strauss books) gives valuable insight into the feelings of the adopted individual as well as some of the feelings of the other members of the family circle. Jean's struggle and sometimes blunt feelings toward her birth mother open up a new area of human feeling. How should we relate to this new person in our life and all these new relatives? All the details of the reunion and building a new relationship with siblings and her mother over the years gives valuable knowledge to others involved in their own reunion process. Jean shows us that a "blended" family can happen. She has not forgotten her adoptive family that raised her, but she also appreicates the family ties of her natural family. This book illustrates that you can have more than one mother/father. You can have many siblings and extended family and make it all work. We have done this in our family situation. This book is well worth the read. I highly recommend it to anyone in the reunion/adoption process.

Jean Strauss has succeeded in writing the first memoir I have ever read that I really didn't want to put down. In the end I had to hand my new baby to my husband, and take myself away from all distractions, because I was completely hooked.

Jean Strauss begins by telling the story of her childhood with her adoptive parents, who she loved dearly, and her difficult relationship with her troubled adoptive brother. She goes on to write with disarming honesty about her search for, and ultimate reunion with, her birth mother, her birth mother's birth mother, her seven siblings and, briefly, her birth father. By the end of the book the fifth grader, who knew nothing about her biological roots, has discovered she's a Mayflower descendent, who's ancestors go back to Charlemagne.

After we've laughed and cried as this brave, appealing, intense, funny woman takes us with her on her journey, we realize that know a lot more about the true meaning of our own 'families' that when we started reading.

"Beneath a Tall Tree" is a true gift. A startling, funny, heart-wrenching family mystery that will move you long after you have finished the last page.

I discovered this book quite by accident. I had already read Birthright by Jean Strauss. I was doing a search on Amazon for a review of that book for a friend when this title came up. When I finally got a copy, I couldn't put it down. Simply, it is an incredibly well written book on searching for one's roots. In the end, its both one's adoptive and biological ties that matter. I particularly appreciated the author's final family tree which included both her birth family and adoptive family. The insight I received from this book will be invaluable to my wife and I as we raise our 7 yo son and 2 yo daughter who were both adopted as infants. Many thanks to Jean Strauss.

Strauss ambles through a fairly predictable first few pages, and
then revs up the motor and we're off on a very UNpredictable
read. Obviously lots of research -- and on the surface it would seem that, heck, everyone has a family tree. But if you don't get interested in your own family tree after reading this, then the problem is with you, not with Strauss' book. What drives her to do the search for her birth mother? And what does she find? And then what? And how do her kids in 2001 eerily but accurately reflect a Civil War vet she didn't know existed? Have fun. Great especially for those who know someone adopted, or are planning to adopt, which includes just about everyone!

The first two hundred pages of this book are great -- one of the best books I have read about an adopted child who grows up and searches for her birth family. Jean Strauss is an excellent writer and a very good story teller. It is a true story of detection, but after about 200 pages the book turns into a search for ancestors and branches off into discussions of family members who were in the Civil War, etc., etc., etc. It seems to me that all of that should have been in a different book, maybe a book about general geneaology, but not in a personal book such as this.

In any event, I applaud Jean Strauss for continuing the literature on adoption/birth families. It is still hard to believe that it was once thought that if you adopted a child, changed their name, told whatever stories you wanted to about their origins, that they would not still yearn for their true identity. Human beings are not as pliable as some would believe.