Note: Thank you to NetGalley, She Writes Press, and Patti Eddington for the advanced reader copy of the book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

As I’ve been reading more and more memoirs by people adopted around the same time I was, I’m finding many common experiences and feelings, even as the stories are different. In the case of author Patti Eddington, her story is one of the reasons I don’t agree with some of the more militant adoption voices out there. Sometimes birthmothers and birthfathers were wronged; they were lied to and told just about anything to get them to sign away their parental rights to the child. In others, you have people who can’t or won’t parent, and what follows is what is in the best interests of the child.

Patti Eddington always knew she was adopted, and her beloved parents seemed amenable enough to questions—but she never wanted to hurt them by expressing curiosity, so she didn’t. The story of her mother cutting off and dying her hair when she was a toddler? She thought it was eccentric and funny, nothing more. When she discovered at fifteen that her birthday wasn’t actually her birthday? She believed it when her mother said she’d changed it to protect her from the “nosy old biddies” who might try to discover her identity.

That description intrigued me. I get upset when trying to learn the truth about peoples’ own history is cast in the light of hurting someone else. Reading the book, it seems no one actually said this to Patti, and her parents were truly supportive, but it’s a burden society places on those who are adopted. However, as the book goes on, it becomes apparent that if Patti had been able to have an honest dialogue with her parents, a lot of hurt and misunderstanding could have been avoided later on.

Patti grew up very loved. Her parents loved her. They were older when they adopted her, and her life was nice in a rural Michigan town with her father working for Oldsmobile and tending a small farm. Her mother was a housewife and a bit eccentric at times, and I saw some of my own mother in her. That German background runs deep.

Like me, as well, Patti thought it was pretty special to be adopted until society told her differently. She stood out among the kids at school and was prone to be bullied, despite her father being on the school board, or maybe that was part of it. Even with that, she loved the life she had growing up. The stories she tells are those present in many families, of funny moments that probably didn’t seem all that funny at the time, and a deep love, even if it wasn’t always expressed.

Patti was the youngest of five children removed from her mother’s custody due to neglect. Actually, Patti (then Mary Ann) was with her biological father’s family when she was removed. The stories she had been told over the years were rooted in truth, but not the whole truth. She had three different dates for when she was born in the end, and some semblance of the truth. How she got there is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

The book reads very well. I actually finished it in one day on a cross-country flight, which is something I rarely do these days. It’s a story of a simple life in many way, but also one that is complicated by the things that could not be shared at the time Patti was growing up. It’s a snapshot of a time and place that doesn’t exist any more.

I felt The Girl With Three Birthdays was a great book that really advocates for honesty in the adoption process, rather than secrets and lies that surround it. Honesty could have prevented the hurt Patti felt as she put the pieces of her life together. Honesty might have also helped her parents deal with the insecurities they felt around the child they adopted.