I Knew You Were There: A Stolen Child's Search for Her Irish Mother

Out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a mortal sin in 1950s Ireland, where unwed pregnant girls were confined to notorious mother-baby homes.

There, nuns forced the girls to work fourteen-hour days and denied them medication to ease the pain of childbirth. When the babies were born, their mothers returned to working in hopes to take their children home, but the cruel church and Irish government sold the infants to wealthy American and European families.

Marie O'Leary Wydra was one of those children. A...