A Touching Story of an Adoption Reunion

An unplanned pregnancy is never an easy thing to deal with. Diane Burke’s memoir One Perfect Day tells the story of how she was forced by her family to place her son up for adoption after she became pregnant at 18.

I think for most women of my generation, it’s hard to imagine what things were like before Roe vs. Wade. Burke passed on the sort of back alley abortion that many desperate women in her situation turned to, but her tale of being shipped off to a home for unwed mothers and having to fight to even hold her son before she signed the adoption papers was heartbreaking.

Her description of a conversion where a social worker said she’d lose her son to foster care if she didn’t place him up for adoption was especially difficult to read, since it seemed like the social worker was telling her she didn’t have a right to her own child.

Burke’s son, Steve Orlandi, offers his thoughts throughout the memoir. He comes across as remarkably open-minded regarding his reunion with his birth mother, and the story of how he managed to make contact with her is quite impressive.

One person I would have like to have heard from as Burke and Orlandi told their story was Orlandi’s adoptive mother Nancy. You would expect many people in her situation to be less than supportive of an adoption reunion, but she seems like lovely woman who was willing to put aside whatever misgivings she had to do what was best for her son.

I had a tear in my eye reading about how she gave Burke flowers when they first met and had made copies of pictures from Orlandi’s childhood so that Burke would have a record if she ever came searching for him.

If nothing else, One Perfect Day shows you that families come in all shapes and sizes.

Disclaimer: A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Photo credit: Amazon