The Finding Place

Gr 6–10—Adopted from China as a baby and raised in Canada, 13-year-old Kelly is devastated by her adoptive father's sudden abandonment of their family. Self-absorbed and moody, she lashes out at her frail and depressed mother and finds solace in fantasies of a life living with her dad. Trying to break the spiral of anger between them, Kelly's mom plans a surprise trip to China and to the "finding place," where Kelly was left as a day-old infant. But the trip exacerbates Kelly's hostility, and she increasingly disobeys even the simplest of family rules, wandering and exploring the back streets of Beijing alone. In China, Mom suffers from increasingly debilitating headaches and has to undergo brain surgery in a foreign place. Kelly searches for her identity, feeling neither Chinese nor Canadian, and constantly questions the reasons for her abandonment by her birth parents and her adoptive father. Maturity comes with the acknowledgement that there are no simple answers in a grown-up world. Lovely descriptions of the Chinese countryside and a side plot of the adoption of an ill Chinese child add diversions from Kelly's ongoing internal dialogue. Although her ambivalence concerning her adoption is a major theme, the primary thread throughout is a child's fear of abandonment by those she loves and trusts.