In this Author POV, we highlight Wonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption, Patricia Knight Meyer's deeply personal account of adoption, identity, and family secrecy. Part memoir and part investigation, the book traces Meyer's decades-long search for the truth about her own origins.
Born in Houston in 1970, Meyer was handed over through an illegal, attorney-brokered adoption with no judge, agency, or legal paperwork. Her story examines the human consequences of that beginning while exploring belonging, generational trauma, family dysfunction, resilience, and the systems that shaped adoption during the Baby Scoop Era.
Can you introduce your book for librarians who may be discovering it for the first time?
In 1970, I was trafficked along a Texas hospital curb in an illegal, attorney-brokered adoption with no judge, no paperwork, and no questions asked. I grew up celebrating a made-up birthday, haunted by nightmares of "The Dark Man."
My parents had hired an attorney to skirt a discriminatory adoption system, and he later blackmailed them with the threat of taking me back. They ultimately paid him $30,000 to keep their paperless child.
Navigating my mother's violent alcoholism and caring for my disabled father, I spent my childhood trying to save my saviors, unaware of the lifelong threat that haunted them: at any moment, someone could come back for their child.
Part detective story and part family portrait, Wonderland follows my journey through America's baby trade and what happens when missing documents and long-held family secrets can no longer withstand one woman's search for the truth. It is also a reckoning with the exploitation of the Baby Scoop Era and the questions that history continues to raise today.
What inspired you to write this book, and what core themes do you hope readers take away from it?
In January 1970, my parents pulled up alongside a hospital curb in Houston, Texas, and drove away with a newborn baby. That baby was me. There was no agency, no judge, no paperwork, and no questions asked.
The attorney who arranged my placement later blackmailed them by threatening to take me back, and they paid him little by little, eventually totaling $30,000.
I grew up celebrating a made-up birthday. When I was 12, my parents confessed that they had never received my birth certificate and did not know my true birthday. At 18, I learned I had never been legally adopted. There was no adoption record to unseal and no court petition available to me. I had no legally obtained identity of any kind until I was 47 years old.
My decades-long search eventually led me to the attorney who had trafficked me and to a biological cousin who had been trafficked by the same man. I found my birth mother and, through her, my birth father in Rio Frio, Texas. Because I found him, he was able to give the testimony that ultimately allowed me to receive my first legally obtained birth certificate.
Around the same time, I found Adoption Knowledge Affiliates and began learning about adoption trauma, birth-mother shame, and the black-market practices of the Baby Scoop Era. I'm a journalist, and I always said I would write a book once I had a story worth telling. Through my own healing journey and subsequent adoption-reform advocacy, I realized I did.
At its heart, Wonderland is a true story about shame and resilience, grief and identity, broken laws and broken systems, healing, and what truly defines family.
What kind of readers or patrons do you see this book resonating with most?
I've been genuinely surprised and encouraged by how many general readers, including people with no personal connection to adoption, have expressed interest in Wonderland through NetGalley.
Readers have responded to the larger human questions at the heart of the story: identity, belonging, family, secrecy, truth, and the lifelong consequences of adoption. While Wonderland explores my experience of a black-market adoption, it is also a story about resilience, the search for truth, and the complicated ways people try to understand where they come from.
This is a book for adult readers and mature audiences. The subject matter involves infant trafficking, systemic corruption, trauma, abuse, and recovery. Its appeal extends beyond adoption nonfiction to true-life investigation, family mystery, trauma memoir, and narrative nonfiction.
What themes or discussion topics do you hope librarians highlight when recommending the book?
The central themes include identity, belonging, family, secrecy, truth, resilience, addiction, generational trauma, and the lifelong consequences of maternal separation.
The book also offers opportunities for discussions about adoption and adoptee experiences, hidden family histories, genealogy and ancestry research, closed adoption and the Baby Scoop Era, biological-family reunions, trauma recovery, social justice, systemic failure, and the relationship between legal identity and personal identity.
I also hope readers consider some of the larger questions Wonderland raises: How do genetics and environment shape who we become? Can love and harm coexist within a family? Who is protected by sealed adoption records? How should we understand the expectation that adoptees feel grateful? And how do you write a truthful memoir when trauma has altered memory and the official record itself cannot be trusted?
Are there any sensitive topics or content considerations librarians should be aware of?
Yes. The book includes verbal abuse, physical abuse, suicide, and rape and is intended for mature audiences. These content warnings are also included in the author's note.
If your book were part of a library display, what topics, themes, or comparable titles would you pair it with?
NetGalley readers have compared Wonderland to Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Educated by Tara Westover.
I would also pair it with Mary Karr's The Liars' Club for its Piney Woods Texas setting, candid tone, and complicated family secrets; Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale; and Rebecca Wells's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood for readers drawn to complex Southern mother-daughter relationships.
For adoption history, it sits alongside Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson, Who Is a Worthy Mother? by Rebecca Wellington, and Taken at Birth by Jane Blasio.
Library display themes could include adoption history and the Baby Scoop Era, true crime and investigative memoir, family secrets and family history, identity and legal personhood, genealogy, nature versus nurture, and Texas or regional history.
The book also has an unexpected literary connection to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Numerous chapters begin with Carroll epigraphs, reinforcing the memoir's recurring imagery of rabbit holes, hidden identities, locked doors, and the disorienting search for truth.
Are there companion resources librarians or educators should know about?
Yes. The print edition includes discussion questions and recommended reading.
Additional resources are available through the book's website and include a photo gallery, an audio recording of me at age three talking with my parents and singing with my grandmother, the foreword by David Bohl, a soundtrack, reflection and discussion questions, recommended reading and endnotes, a book trailer, and a video of my reunion.
Which formats are currently available?
Wonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption will be published by Unsolicited Press on November 3, 2026.
Paperback ISBN: 9781969421969
The book will also be available as an ebook.
The audiobook, published by YAYDNA Press and narrated by me, has ISBN 9798994052327.
Libraries and bookstores can order print copies through Asterism, the publisher's distributor, which also handles bulk and multiple-copy orders. The audiobook will be available to libraries through OverDrive and hoopla by November 3.
How could this book be used in community events or themed programming throughout the year?
November is an especially natural fit because it is National Adoption Awareness Month, and Wonderland publishes on November 3. November is also National Life Writing Month, so libraries could pair an author discussion with a memoir-writing workshop, which I lead.
Other programming opportunities include National Human Trafficking Awareness Day and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in January; Women's History Month and World Storytelling Day in March; National DNA Day, National Library Week, and National Child Abuse Prevention Month in April; Mother's Day and Birthmother's Day programming in May; Father's Day and International Archives Day in June; National Recovery Month in September; and Family History Month, American Archives Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and Adoptee Remembrance Day in October.
The book's Alice in Wonderland motif also creates opportunities for more unexpected programming around Alice in Wonderland Day in July or Mad Hatter Day in October.
Libraries could use the book for author talks, adoption-rights panels, genealogy and family-history programs, memoir-writing workshops, book clubs, staged readings, and college or university programs related to social work, family policy, law, journalism, or adoption studies.
Do you offer author engagement options for schools or libraries?
Yes. I offer author talks, panel discussions, memoir-writing workshops, staged readings, and book-club visits.
I am also available to discuss adoptee rights and access to original birth certificates, genealogy and DNA discovery, adoption history, family identity, and memoir writing.
I can participate virtually throughout the year and consider in-person invitations throughout the United States. I'm based in the Texas Hill Country and spend part of the year in New Orleans, so Central Texas, the Houston-Galveston area, and southern Louisiana are particularly easy to schedule.
Because of the subject matter, Wonderland is best suited to adult and college-level audiences rather than elementary or middle school readers.
Is there anything else you would like librarians, teachers, or educators to know about your work?
Patricia Knight Meyer is an author, speaker, journalist, and adoption-reform advocate. She was handed over as an infant along a Texas hospital curb in 1970 through an attorney-brokered adoption with no agency, judge, or legal paperwork. She was never legally adopted and grew up with a fraudulent birth certificate and no legal documentation of her true identity.
Her search for answers began at 39, when she had no original records, known birth name, or confirmed date or place of birth. Using public-record databases and investigative research, Meyer tracked down the attorney responsible for her placement and discovered a biological cousin who had been trafficked by the same man. She later reunited with both of her birth parents, and her reunion video with her birth father has been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube. At age 47, she received her first legally obtained birth certificate.
Meyer tells this story in her debut memoir, Wonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption (Unsolicited Press, November 3, 2026), which received the IndieReader Discovery Award in True Crime and was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, Next Generation Indie Book Award, IndiesToday Memoir Award, and StoryTrade Prodigy Award. She also narrates the audiobook, released through her imprint, YAYDNA Press.
She serves on the board of the National Association of Adoptees and Parents, where she hosts the monthly NAAP Happy Hour, and is connected with organizations including Concerned United Birthparents, Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, Support Texas Adoptee Rights, and Saving Our Sisters. Her blog, My Adopted Life, reaches a growing community of adoptees, first parents, and advocates. She also speaks at adoption conferences and leads memoir-writing workshops.
Meyer has appeared on Al Jazeera's The Stream and HuffPost Live, and her essays have been published in Ms. Magazine, Severance Magazine, Narrative Arc, and Kinsmen Quarterly. After leaving high school before graduating, she earned her GED, worked her way through community college, and was later admitted to the journalism program at the University of Texas at Austin, where she graduated as a single mother. She went on to a 20-year career in books and digital marketing.
She is also the founder of YAYDNA Genetic Greeting Cards, created for the complicated joy of DNA discovery and reunion. Meyer splits her time between the Texas Hill Country and New Orleans with her Chihuahua, Ollie. She is the mother of a photographer daughter and GiGi to two grandsons.
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