Booth Girls: Pregnancy, Adoption, and the Secrets We Kept

A thoughtful and emotional multigenerational story of contested motherhood and the stigma of adoption—equal parts biography, oral history, history, and memoir.

Kim Heikkila's mother had a secret: in 1961, two years before her marriage, she became pregnant. After several months hidden in her parents' attic bedroom, she gave birth to a daughter at the Salvation Army's Booth Memorial Hospital, a home for unwed mothers in St. Paul, and surrendered her for adoption. More than 30 years later, Kim...