Somewhere Out There
by Mary McSwain Steele and Allan Schildknecht
Hardcover 979-8244360394 $19.99
Paperback ISBN 9798274957229 $12.99
Kindle $5.99
Audiobook $3.99
As Mary Steele’s mother Betty lay dying, she revealed a secret ‘she had harbored her entire life. “‘Please find the child I gave up before I met your father,’ she said. ‘I gave him up for adoption.’”
Somewhere Out There, a moving memoir by Mary McSwain Steele and Allan Schildknecht, tells how after a 15-year search Steele and her sister Susan finally found the brother they had never known existed until the eve of their mother’s passing.
Steele tells us that even her mother’s family did not know that their daughter had a baby shortly after graduation from nursing school.
“The only other person with whom Mom shared her secret was a doctor she worked with and trusted. He helped arrange for her to go to a home for unwed mothers in Kansas City to have the baby, who would then be adopted. She didn’t tell her parents or any of her friends about the pregnancy because she said, ‘they wouldn’t understand.’”
And so, abandoned by the father of her child, afraid to reveal that she was even pregnant to her family in the conservative 1940s, Betty Rosson gave up her child. She later married and had a son, Michael, and two daughters, Mary and Susan.
While Mary’s childhood had its challenges as her divorced mother raised her, Allan’s early years were a relative luxury. Unfortunately, his parents divorced too. However, they still raised him and his fellow adoptive siblings with love and encouragement. After a few of life’s trials and errors, he eventually became enormously successful as founder of Irrigation Hawaii, an international company.
However, their mother’s deathbed confession, and her request that they find their half-sibling, sowed only doubt in the minds of her daughters. Was the child merely the figment of imagination in a woman approaching death? Did the child survive? If so, where was he?
Mary and Susan then began the long and seemingly impossible search for their brother, not knowing if he even existed.
Meanwhile, sometime later, Allan began a search of his own.
Those searches were interrupted by two cancer diagnoses – one for Mary and Allan. Finally, a third party called Mary’s attention to a possible match.
It was Allan.
After an extended correspondence, they met. Mary suggested they write a book about their discovery of each other.
Somewhere Out There is a wonderful memoir that should inspire anyone considering adoption. While life has its challenges, it can also have enormous rewards.
Steele, who grew up in Readstown, Wis., spends most of her time with her husband Steve in Spencer, Iowa, and they winter in Florida. Schildknecht, who helped write a substantial portion of the book, died shortly before it was published.
(Michael Tidemann writes from Estherville, Iowa. His Facebook page is Author Michael Tidemann.)
Synopsis: Somewhere Out There, a memoir that tells of the search for a long-lost sibling, is the August featured selection for Writers and Writing. The book is authored Mary McSwain Steele of Spencer, Iowa, and the late Allan Schildknecht who lived in Florida until his passing shortly before the book was published.