Patty's Journey: From Orphanage to Adoption and Reunion [Hardcover]

Priscilla Ferguson Clement (Author), Donna Scott Norling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

The author recounts her troubling experiences in an orphanage in Minnesota just before World War II, when she was separated from her siblings, and her struggle to recover her past and her family while growing up as an adopted child. UP.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When she was seven years old, the author was told about a girl named Donna Ruth. "Do you like that name?" asked her new adoptive father. "I nodded my head dumbly... 'Good,' he said, apparently satisfied, 'then that will be your name from now on.'" In that moment, Patricia Ann Pearson was replaced by Donna Ruth Scott. Three year earlier, in the depth of the Depression, Norling's father had been arrested for burglary. A few months later, Norling, her older sister and baby brother were placed in Minnesota's Owatonna State Public School. After being bounced from foster home to group foster home and back to Owatonna, Norling had become a toughened, somewhat cynical observer of adult behavior; of dormitory pillows that were on beds during the day, in lockers at night; of state examiners who prodded her about her favorite foods when the institution mandated cornmeal mush; of her new-minted identity. Despite her adoptive family's well-meaning, if misguided, attempts to erase Norling's past, she retained both her toughness and her skepticism. There is refreshingly little self-pity?which doesn't mean that Norling isn't sharply aware of her own position and of the combination of shame and sentimentality that surrounded adoption. Norling uses a slightly childish tone in the earliest pages that is beneath her generally fine prose. But her observations of children, adults and finding one's self in the most changeable circumstances are what make this book an excellent addition to the many memoirs coming out this fall.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA. In 1936, while the harsh fist of the Depression still maintained its grip on much of the population, Patty's father helped to rob a store?and was caught. It was a foolish decision, but he had a young wife, two small daughters, and a baby boy to feed. Once he was incarcerated, the state of Minnesota "rescued" the children from their indigent mother and placed them in the State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children. Separated from her siblings, and facing infrequent visits from her distraught mother, four-year-old Patty begins her journey. Her story describes her attempts to see her brother and sister, ill-fated placements in foster situations, molestations, and, finally, adoption. The book follows her new life as Donna Ruth, her eventual marriage, and her search for her past. Patty's story also details the horrific care of orphans and dependent children in the middle part of this century. The value of this book to YAs is not only in its depiction of a young child's courage, but also in its lessons in history. Attitudes toward the young and poor are vividly described. An afterword chronicles the treatment of displaced children from the English colonies through the 20th century. Interesting and thought-provoking.?Carol DeAngelo, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 186 pages
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816628661
• ISBN-13: 978-0816628667
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,671,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important and enlightening, September 10, 2008

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Patty's Journey: From Orphanage To Adoption And Reunion (Paperback)

I've now read several nonfiction works by adults who were adopted as children and later reunited with their birth parents. Patty's Journey is very good.

The book is well-written, though Donna Scott Nordling's prose is not nearly as compelling or literary in quality as that of Betty Jean Lifton's Twice Born. Nor does this book offer the same insight into an adopted child's sense of being different, and lost.

Nevertheless, Nordling's is a very important story for the pain it exposes of children who were torn from their families by unfeeling courts making little or no attempt to keep the biological families together. She and her siblings were taken from their mother after her father stole some radios during the Depression to try and support them; for reasons unclear, her mother never fought to regain custody.

Unlike some adoptees, Nordling's adotpive family offered her a genuine love, despite making some typical mistakes. And in her case, sadly, that family closeness and the years of separation made it impossible for her to renew the warmth she had once had with her biological family.

For all adoptive families, birth families and adopted people, this is a very enlightening and important book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SMALL GIRL'S DETERMINATION......, August 26, 2007

By 

Anne Salazar "inveterate reader" (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patty's Journey: From Orphanage To Adoption And Reunion (Paperback)

I adored this book about a little girl's determination to have as normal as life as she could (whatever normal means!). It is always interesting to me how much she, and children like her, love and adore their parents, and yet when the going gets tough for the parents they dump their kids, in this instance in an orphanage. I can hardly believe adults are this cruel, but some of them are. I realize the conditions of the Depression were terrible, but I have also read about many, many families who stayed together and somehow made do. Not here. (Read: Little Heathens by Mildren Armstrong Kalish.)

Patty, soon to become Donna, is resilient and hopeful and sad and ambitious all at once. She is a survivor. She apparently harbors no hostility about any members of her birth family or her adoptive family. Indeed, noting the glaring differences in her adoptive family, she is so kind to them, both while they were living and now that they are gone. I loved reading about her and especially about her love story, which has endured for many years. I believe her husband and the love they have shared since their teen years had a huge part in helping this brave girl learn how to live and to love and therefore become an interesting, sweet, kind, and relatively content woman.

4.0 out of 5 stars Patty's Journey, November 12, 2010

By 

Lois Carlson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patty's Journey: From Orphanage To Adoption And Reunion (Paperback)

As a clinical social worker who has spent most of my professional life relating to adoption,including work with birth families and post-adoption therapy services, I found Patty's chronicle exceptionally well-written--balanced, real, historically informative, educational and very readable. I commend and thank her for providing us with such a sound accounting of one person's adoption journey, an accounting to which so many can relate.