Barking Up the Family Tree

Adventure, Adoption, Humor . . . and more. Join this adoptee-memoirist-sleuth as she navigates three countries, mountains of red tape and a forest of branches to find her place in the family tree. Writer Jill McDowell relives a humorous, poignant and captivating saga as she doggedly pursues her identity, history and pedigree (or lack thereof). Learn how she and 230 other infant adoptees were "disappeared" from Canada in the 1940s under the auspices of Alberta's Adoption Services. Scandal, intrigue, and serendipity abound. Follow along as a jetlagged McDowell, having just returned from one of her many trips to Russia, happens upon a "Personals" ad in the Los Angeles Times. Listen while she connects with phone directory services in Canada in a first attempt to ferret out family. Rejoice when she encounters a hand-drawn map of the Russian Village where Germans from Russia (her people?) first settled in 1763. Witness the aftermath of a tornado that decimated the family homestead, save for a rickety barn everyone had hoped would blow away. Meet busloads of Mennonites arriving to lend a hand and pick up debris from fields of bright yellow canola. Then, in Part Two, lose yourself in Mother Russia as this directionally-challenged memoirist narrates episodes from her two-year stay in the land of her ancestors. From Brits to bugs to bureaucracy, you'll accompany author McDowell as she visits the 1000-year-old village of Suzdal on Christmas morning when the weather is a nippy 39 degrees below zero. You'll follow along as she traces her family history in Norka, a Volga-German settlement established during the reign of Catherine the Great, and join in as she and her Japanese Embassy colleagues lose their way on the dusty backroads 350 kilometers from Moscow. Experience the miles of red tape at the Russian Embassy in Estonia, and meet a cast of unlikely characters aboard the Polonaise as McDowell journeys by train from Warsaw to Moscow and—with a stroke of good luck—back again. This entertaining second part of McDowell's narrative (published previously as Lost in Mother Russia) will take you on a humorous journey through Eastern Europe as the author researches her ancestry, teaches ESL to Russian and Japanese speakers, and gets lost in the vast and snowy expanse of Russia. Finally, in Part Three, Barking Once Again, catch up with recent and remote family goings-on in the Great White North where our intrepid Canadian traveler returns time and again to the land of her birth. Happy Travels!