A moving memoir that offers a vital new perspective on adoption—from the rarely glimpsed birth mother’s point of view.

What kind of mother gives up her son? Bernadette Murphy grew up the “miracle child” of her immigrant Irish Catholic family, arriving unexpectedly after her mother’s difficulty conceiving and her parents’ adoption of her older brother. Three more siblings followed, and as her once-glamorous mother sank deeper into depression, and her father struggled to support the family, Bernadette grew up quickly and cared for her brothers and sister. When Bernadette’s first love resulted in a pregnancy at age sixteen, faced with limited options and a belief, from her Catholic upbringing, that abortion was a sin, she made the impossible choice to give up the baby for adoption.

More than forty years later, Bernadette, the mother of three other grown children she raised and still living with deep-rooted shame and guilt for having given up her son, was consumed by thoughts of the boy she relinquished. What did he think of her, if he thought of her at all? Was he angry, troubled, content? As she launched a desperate search for her firstborn, she began writing him letters, describing her life and explaining her decision.

At once an incisive, affecting memoir of a childhood filled with hardship and love and the story of a birth mother’s quest to find her son and forgive herself, What Kind of Mother challenges our assumptions about adoption, opening up an important conversation about family, love, and possibility.