**". . . brutally honest . . . a compelling work. GET IT" -Kirkus Reviews "Moving story of an adopted daughter's search for her own voice." -Booklife "Well-written and poignant . . . engaging. Feelings and experiences to which many adoptees can relate to." -Betsie Norris, Founder and Executive Director, Adoption Network Cleveland ** "As if You Were Our Own" It was 1947 in Celina, Ohio, when Dr. Ralph Beare and his wife, Lou, childless and in their early forties, adopted a four-and-a-half-month-old orphan. “Janice” knew she was adopted, because her mommy read her a book about how the Beare's chose her out of a Home. "We chose you, but we love you as if you were our own." However, her mother never seemed to forget she was adopted, especially on Mother’s Day, when she couldn’t look at Janice without crying. A Lucky Orphan Janice learned that most grown-ups in town knew her as "Dr. Beare's Daughter." Her daddy took her everywhere and people stopped to stoop down and tell her how he had saved their lives. The nuns from church would pat her on the head and tell her how lucky she was to have been adopted by such wonderful parents. Janice's struggle to be that elusive golden child that she imagined her parents really wanted came with the erasure of her own identity. "Their own was somethng I could never be." In spite of her best efforts to be her parents’ perfect child, there was a small voice, deep inside her, that popped up at the most inconvenient times, saying, "I'm here." Try as she might to silence it, her true self often slipped out to take charge, and then there was trouble.