Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me by Lorilee Craker

When Lorilee Craker was a young teen, she found a kindred spirit in Anne Shirley, the orphan in the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. Montgomery, who grew up on Prince Edward Island like Anne, lost her own mother as a toddler. Montgomery’s father subsequently left P.E.I. to strike out on his own, leaving the young girl with her grandparents.

Craker herself was given up for adoption at birth, and she became part of a loving Mennonite family. She and her husband, in turn, adopted a daughter of their own from Korea.

Inthis memoir, she intertwines these four orphan stories, framing them in the greater picture of our adoption into the family of God. Craker is at her best when relating the emotional complexity of her adoption experiences. She writes with openness and honesty about her desire for connection with her birth parents and her understanding of how that same desire will affect her own daughter’s life.

The book has a sense of terrain, meandering through the island of Anne and L. M. Montgomery, her own childhood home in Winnipeg, Man., and her daughter’s native Korea, as well as her own emotional terrain as a child growing up with questions about her biological parents.

You’ll get more out of this book if you have read the Anne series; if you’re already an Anne fan, you might want to start preparations now for your own pilgrimage to P.E.I. (Tyndale Momentum)