Jennifer LauckRecensioni

Found is actually a sequel to a memoir called Blackbird, which I have not read. There was no need to read it first, although I plan to search for it.

Jennifer Lauck is an award-winning journalist, a skilled memoir writer, teacher, and speaker. But before she was those things she was a newborn never touched by her biological mother, a baby adopted by a sickly woman and her husband who both died by the time Jennifer was seven, and a little girl sent to live with various relatives of the adoptive parents. Later she was adopted by relatives who were inadequate and abusive. She knew they didn’t love her and wanted her social security money.

Apparently Blackbird is the story of her childhood, but in Found, Lauck gives the reader enough scenes of that childhood to understand the woman Lauck became. Found is the story of that woman.

Lauck presents herself as a “tough cookie” who goes after her education and a career as a reporter with determination. At the same time, the reader learns that there is a gaping abyss of loss and crushing feelings of abandonment at her very core. When she begins to search for what is wrong, she ends up at a Buddhist retreat, and for years, she commutes between the retreat and her home. But it’s a long time before she realizes that she needs to search for her birth mother. The irony of the seasoned reporter not realizing she had the tools necessary to search indicates how far down Lauck had suppressed her real feelings.

There is so much about Lauck’s story that is tragic. In the midst of the trail of tragedy the reader follows Lauck on, guide posts are placed. These guide posts are clues back to, or threads leading from, her original identity. They also add suspense and tension to the story.

Where this book moved beyond other adoption stories I’ve read is that Lauck allows the reader to explore with her the complexity of her feelings about her losses, about adoption, and about her family members, especially her birth mother. There are so many emotion-filled scenes, but a quiet moment that really touched my heart was when Lauck agrees to be the mommy driver for two of her daughter’s classmates. She recognizes them as fellow adoptees. In their case, they are international adoptees, from Vietnam and India, whereas Lauck’s adoption was domestic (and private, not through the state, which made her search more difficult). With this one expert move, Lauck shows the reader her growing awareness of how the trauma of adoption has affected her personality, that she has learned compassion for others (yes, others have gone through this early abandonment and loss, too), and that some of the same problems of adoption still exist today.

As an adoptive mother and sibling, I feel so strongly that anybody considering adoption today needs to read accounts by adult adoptees and make sure she pursues adoption for the right reasons and in a manner that is set up 100% to benefit the child (and maybe not even just that one child, but children in general).

Although this book focuses on adoption, most people have experienced or will experience losses in their life, and this book will resonate triumphantly within the heart and soul of any reader.

Written in a child's voice, this memoir tells of Jennifer Lauck's life from age five to about eleven.

Jennifer deeply loved her mother. But her mother was sick and could not always take care of her. Over time she was in the hospital more and more frequently, until she died. Jennifer and her older brother were then cared for by their father, who was often not home. Then he introduced them to Deb, and in time Deb and her father are wed.

From the start Deb and Jenny did not get along. Deb had odd ideas about how children learn, in part learned from the cult religion she followed. She also clearly favored her own three children over her husband's two. Jenny often felt like she wasn't a part of anything, that nobody really saw her, except to blame her for something she didn't understand. She resisted vocally much of the time but even when she tried to "cooperate" her efforts were not acknowledged.

Her life became worse and worse, until she was essentially abandoned, forced to make her own way, earning her living and finding her way to school when she could. It was only through a stroke of luck that she escaped this bizarre arrangement.

The story reveals how Jennifer learned not to trust and then to trust again. She says the writing was cathartic, as one would imagine it would be, although reliving some of the worst times was difficult. Her childhood shaped her personality and showed her that she was stronger than the adversities that set upon her.

A true story of survival. I really liked it, but wished I had first read Blackbird. This book is the sequel.

i'm not sure that this is all true but even as a novel it's good. are memoirs ever 100% true?½

Wow, what emotions this can bring to your heart. A 5 year old girl, Jenny, looses her momma to illness. A mean cousin reveals to her she's adopted. Her step-brother, Bryan, ignoring her. Father remarries, step kids not nice, neither is the step mother. Dad dies of heart attack. Step mother denies them from seeing fathers relatives, keeping them only for the SS money. Bryan holds back his anger and does what the step mother, Debb, tells him to do. Jenny tries but can't help it if she doesn't understand what is expected without instructions. So much happening to this little girl that it breaks your heart reading it. Thank goodness her grandparents come to the rescue!!

I am so glad I chose the audio version----reading her own work could not have been any better for a listening reward. I have missed her other work so I will be more than happy going back to pick up the pieces.

This book grabbed me, shook me and when I wouldn't let go, sunk it's teeth in and devoured me. SOOO why didn't I give it 5 stars?

Well I always give 5 stars to any author that deals with abuse etc and the healing from telling their story. A bravery that goes beyond any star point system. However, the BOOK has to be spot on with no questions as to its accuracy.

This is a Memoir/ Bio and in such terrible tales effect the other people involved in the telling of that tale. I have a really hard time with books of this caliber telling me the truth from a child of tender years as being the truth beyond a doubt. I don't remember such things at that age but then I wasn't abused either. So for me unless it is explained like diaries or court documents or another's testimony etc. it is all suspect as to how the author can recall such vivid memories from an age that one usually cannot recall.

Do not get me wrong the book was excellent and the trials the author went thru were unspeakably cruel. Read this book, weep for a little, then sing with joy that the author was able to paint a rainbow at the end. But to get a five star put in the book somewhere the "how" the memories were brought to the surface.

This book came out late September; I have never waited to read a book before it was published until this one.
Jennifer continues telling her story and you can see how she has grown into a woman who has had to harden her heart or be mortally wounded. She has been a person with a definite will to live and she turns her life experiences into positive lessons. Great! (As Michelle would say, "Love Her!"

The title is the reason I bought this book, of course, and am I ever glad I did! It was wonderful! It's like a modern time Cinderella, except you keep waiting and waiting for her life to turn around. When her parents die she is taken in by relatives that seem to do it more for the social security check than anything else. It is written from her child viewpoint without whining and very matter of fact. I can't wait for her next book/sequel....

An excellent book about a child who is resilient and has a will to survive under hard circumstances.

Jennifer Lauck is an accomplished writer and a gifted human being. She proved herself as a writer in her previous books, including Blackbird and Still Waters. She has also proven herself as an extraordinary human being and woman. In addition to writing her brave, honest, and revealing memoirs, she has been a speaker, teacher, and investigative reporter.

Jennifer uses all of her gifts again, in this moving and inspirational memoir: Found. Here, she takes us on her journey in search of her birth mother. Feeling incomplete, Jennifer feels the need to find her to become a whole person. She feels the need to come to terms with her past she must come to terms with her birth mother. Still struggling to belong, to fit in, to find peace within herself she must make peace with her past, with the life she lost.

Jennifer spent most of her life trying to find herself. She built her own world, forged her own way in it, and created her own identity. You have to respect that. In her we find courage, intelligence, and inspiration. She is an amazing woman with much to offer and much to be proud of.

An amazingly shocking view of the author's tumultuous childhood. Losing first her mother, and then her father, Lauck was orphaned at a young age, leaving her and her brother in the hands of a stepmother who never wanted them. Despite being tormented, teased, abused, and abandoned Lauck somehow manages to find her way through life, meeting a handful of characters along the way who help to make life livable. A true testament to the human spirit and a child's resistance.

If you enjoyed Lauck's first novel in this memoir series then you're likely to enjoy her second, Still Waters. For me, this novel was a bit more dark and twisted and I didn't enjoy the place the story telling came from. It was a great novel though and was well written. Perhaps I just felt too uncomfortable with the events occurring in the story. It was very interesting to follow Jennifer's life through this next phase of her journey and to see how her past affected her future and in what ways. A true coming of age occurs here.½

This poignant memoir about a young girl who loses her childhood, innocence and mother all too soon, touched me deeply. What a gorgeous story of this girl's journey through a neglectful and abusive childhood to emerge at the end of it shaped by her experiences. Jennifer Lauck does an incredible job of depicting somewhat delicate situations she experienced and telling them through the voice of a child so masterfully. Definitely a story that will stick with me for years to come.

Jennifer Lauck has written a moving and riveting story of her traumatic childhood of abuse and neglect. Highly recommended.½

Well written memoir of a girl growing to adult hood in very trying circumstances, and then having to come to grips with the anger the abuse and it effects had on her and her brother. I found parts of the book very difficult to read, but once I was passed that section it was easier.

I always approach a memoir with a good deal of scepticism because how can one remember things from so long past and when one was so young. The two books by Lauck were particularly difficult to believe because she never suggests that she kept a diary or anything else that would have aided in her writing, but obviously some of the things were very well remembered because in book two she finds written confirmation of events in the first book.

Story of unhappy childhood when a bewhildered, orphaned child was forced to fend for herself. Another eye-opener into abusive childhoods but you sense that she will come through.

It took me almost 5 years to get around to this book, but I "enjoyed" (not sure that's the right word, given the depressing nature of this book) it. I appreciated that Lauck wrote the book as if she were still a child, and I think that helped her tell the story. For me, however, it made this book much more depressing because she is so totally powerless. One thing which bothered me throughout was her misuse of me/I. I know she's supposed to be a child and it may have been intentionally done, but it drove me batty because I was constantly correcting her in my head.

I'm think that we've learned something by now and that in 2009 someone would call Child Protective Services when Deb abandons her to the homeless shelter at age 11 with a $10 bill.

I was interested enough in how she and Bryan survived (or in Bryan's case [that kid's a train wreck happening if ever I've seen one] didn't), that I've ordered the sequel from the library. I'm hoping for better grammar.

This was one of those books I could not put down. I could not believe all the things this child went through. Just when you thought nothing worse could happen, you were stunned again.

Tied for 5th w/ Seabiscuit. Read it--you'll never complain about your childhood again.

Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck:

Thoughts and comments:

Taken from the dedication page:

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly."
The Beatles (1968)

"Blackbird", which I thought to be a novel while reading it, is in actuality a heartrending memoir written with such clarity from the viewpoint of author Jenifer Lauck's childhood from ages 5 to 11. She is one of a family of four. Her mother, with whom she has a wonderful relationship, is very ill and on some days cannot even get out of bed. Her father is a good and loving family man who works long hours while trying to care for his ill wife and family as best he can. Jenny also has an older pre-adolescent and emotional escapist brother.
She is a little girl who bends in the wind and under the direst of circumstances must take on the role of caregiver and sometime "adult". She bends but she does not break. She is always thinking of ways to help the situation while her older brother runs from it with his skateboard, often leaving her alone with her ill mother.
Jenny must absorb many life changes in her young years in order that her mother's health care may be better accommodated. A move far away so mother will be near better doctors and care facilities, non-existent time with her work worn father, a non-supportive brother who leaves her to clean up after their mother's messes and a family cousin who has come to take care of the kids but locks them out of the house while he gets high with his friends.
Despite all Jenny goes through she remains that soft little bird who tries her best to help make their life okay. Eventually her mother dies and Jenny is thrown into a new "family" with a "step" directly out of Jenny's favorite book "Snow White". She has many more trials to come and it would take all day to discuss them here, but with Jenny--you see a little girl who always looks for the positive side of what is happening regardless of the life she is forced to live.
Once I started this book I was unable to put it down. I found it horrifying and yet fascinating and real. It was very well written; realistic and not cloying. I very highly recommend it for anyone looking for a good read.
Our beloved Frank McCourt said of this book: "The unblinking look of one child at a hard world. Written gloriously & movingly."
He's right.½

A moving memoir of a real-life fairy-tale gone wrong.

A very good well-written memoir.

In a genre pretty well saturated by the likes of Sedaris and Burroughs (who I also love), it's refreshing to get a female voice in the mix. Go hunt out the sequel for the rest of the story.