Books for Christian Girls: "History Lost and Found" by Beth Adams

About this book:

“When Pearl Allen passes away the day after her 100th birthday, her granddaughter Tracy begins the difficult task of sorting through her beloved grandmother’s belongings. She finds a worn, marked-up King James Bible and a trove of journals and scrapbooks in her grandmother’s cedar chest. Within is a handwritten family tree with the name Ezekiel Collins listed as one of Pearl’s children. There has to be a mistake because how can she have an uncle she’s never heard of?”

Series: Book #1 in the “Secrets from Grandma’s Attic” series.

Spiritual Content- A bit of Bible reading; Church going (a few times for answers for the mystery); Talks about God & His love for us that’s shown in the Bible; 'H's are capital when referring to God; Many mentions of Bibles; Mentions of God, trusting Him, His love, & grace; Mentions of Bible reading & devotionals; Mentions of those & events in the Bible; Mentions of prayers, praying, & blessings over food; Mentions of churches, church going, a church choir, services, your group & pastors/rectors; Mentions of nuns from a convent running a home for unwed mothers; A few mentions of a Methodist church & a Lutheran church; A couple mentions of sharing the gospel; A mention of it always being a good time to worship God; A mention of a miracle; A mention of Christian books; A mention of a woman being a deacon at her church; A mention of a sin;
*Note: A teenager says that he didn’t want to hear about his great-grandmother’s Bible but rather about hear about soldiers when interviewing her for a report; A handful of mentions of luck & bad luck; A couple mentions of a rumored ghost haunting a place & another haunted place; A mention of a woman’s demons; A mention of a place being called evil (because of treatment received there).

Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘sucking up’; A bit of eye rolling & sarcasm; Mentions of wars, the Pearl Harbor bombing, fighting, deaths, & grief (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of the Spanish flu, “treatments” for it (such as drinking bleach or smelling gasoline) & deaths; Mentions of a baby ring (Georgia Tann) & kidnapping/stealing the children and falsifying records; Mentions of drugs being part of why two kids are in the foster care system, the kids suffering when they were with their birth mother because of her own demons, the kids ties to the birth mother never being severed because of blood, them being retraumatized every time after visiting her, & the possibility of the birth mother getting custody again; Mentions of fires & a family losing their house; Mentions of shipwrecks & colliding boats; Mentions of divorces & an unwanted separation; Mentions of lies & lying; Mentions of rumors; Mentions of anger & tension towards others over differences in opinion on town laws; Mentions of elderly family members having memory problems (including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, & someone implies another is crazy by moving her finger in a circle on the side of her head when talking about the elderly woman); A few mentions of the possibility of the death of a child with medical problems; A few mentions of car crashes & a death (involving an eight-teen wheeler); A couple mentions of jealousy (between sisters); A mention of the possibility of an infant dying at birth; A mention of a death from cancer; A mention of a man dying after a long fight with Alzheimer’s; A mention of a woman’s husband being diagnosed with leukemia; A mention of someone’s lip piercing; A mention of a missing person; A mention of a flood; A mention of nightmares; A mention of graffiti; A mention of alcohol; A mention of someone looking like another just punched a kitten;
             *Note: *Major Spoilers* A man tells his adoptive mother (who has always tried to keep his adoption a secret) that his biological mother has never been and is not his mother, that she is; The adoptive mother adds that the biological family isn’t his family because they gave him up and abandoned him, but he defends them because they didn’t know about him *End of Spoilers*; Many, many mentions of foster care, adoption, & biological parents (including mothers being forced to give-up their children, comments about adoption being rooted in the heartbreak of a mother sacrificing herself for her child, a comment about the children finding loving homes and the birth mothers “going on to have another chance at a more traditional life”, & Tracy finding records of a home for unwed mothers and wondering if the young woman wanted to relinquish their babies, wanted to raise them, or if they ever gotten over the loss, up to semi-detailed on her thought and wonderings about their feelings and emotions); Many mentions of institutions back in historical days where adults, children, and babies would be admitted for many different reasons (such as schizophrenia, mongolism, multiple personalities, laziness, epileptic fits, dropsy, tuberculosis, overtaxing of mental powers, hysteria, & babies with disabilities like craniosynostosis and Down syndrome), the babies or people being “sent away” to there by their family members (Tracy wonders if this is what happened to the person named in the Bible, but believes that her grandparents would have only put the baby there if they couldn’t care for him with a severe medical problem), a facility being described like it being like “every horror move you’ve ever seen”, & deaths of those there; Mentions of mothers who had depression or other mental health issues (one would be in the mental hospital for it); Mentions of adoptions being kept quiet in the 1940s & families pretending their adopted child is biologically theirs (legally and publicly); Mentions of creepy things & kids hunting for them (books, items, & a fake skeleton); A few mentions of the passing of a beloved sister who had Down syndrome (she was in her thirties); A few mentions of wondering if unwed mothers were able to “get over” giving up their children (including someone saying, “of course not. How could you get over something like that?”); A few mentions of adopted adults feeling like “something” is missing from their lives (their biological families); A few mentions of Wikipedia; A few mentions of car brands; A couple mentions of a brand name item (Nintendo Switch); A couple mentions of an author (Mark Twain); A couple mentions of TV shows & movies (Unsolved Mysteries & Nightmare on Elm Street); A mention of the possibility of disgracing a family and being disowned because of it; A mention of a fictional character (Spider-Man); A mention of Google maps; A mention of horror movies.

Sexual Content- Three cheek kiss (between Tracy and her husband); A bit of hand holding; Tracy wonders if the mystery name in the Bible could be a child from an out-of-wedlock pregnancy & when she first voices this thought, her cousin’s husband says that “it happens all the time, doesn’t it? Your grandparents were human, after all. They probably made all kinds of mistakes, just like the rest of us”; *Major Spoilers* Tracy tries to figure out if it was an out-of-wedlock pregnancy because her grandfather was stationed elsewhere in the war during the time the baby would have been conceived, but then finds out it was another woman and her grandfather (before either of them were married) and that the baby was taken away from the mother by the nuns at an unwed mothers home; It’s said by Tracy’s cousin and sister add that the woman “got pregnant with Grandpa’s help, she didn’t do it alone” and “Grandpa got [the woman] pregnant”; He never knew about the existence of the baby because he was shipped out and never received her letters; The child grew up in a wealthy family and had a “happy enough” childhood, but never met either of his biological parents before they passed and shows his sadness at that; He did meet Tracy’s grandmother and she welcomed him with open arms and stayed in-touch with him until her death *End of Major Spoilers*; In five letters-like parts added-in through the book, there’s hints to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and the girl’s parents not knowing (due to her mother’s illness and fear that her father “will kill” her; *Major Spoiler* When she does tell her father, he says its merciful that her mother is out of her mind and in “that awful place” (an institution/mental hospital) because she won’t feel the same he feels over having a pregnant and unwed daughter; She is sent to a home for unwed mothers where the nuns will “take care of everything”; She planned to keep her baby and runaway if necessarily, and while she hits the nuns who take the baby away from her, she ultimately doesn’t get to keep or even hold her baby; In a letter to the birth father, she’s upset and says that if he was there and not in the war, this wouldn’t have happened; Later, it’s revealed that she would get depressed every summer around the day she gave birth *End of Major Spoilers*; Many mentions of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, girls being sent to a home for unwed mothers when they “got in trouble”, everyone making “mistakes” (particularly used in this context), a couple making some “bed decisions” and it driving them apart, & young women relinquishing their babies if unwed (which makes Tracy wonder if the women wanted to do that or wanted to raise their babies; She also notes that some of the nuns in charge of the unwed mothers’ home would treat the women that protested giving up their babies as if that pain was “if not [a] punishment, at least natural consequences for the actions that had landed them there in the first place”which makes Tracy upset about the men involved in the creation of the child not being a part of anything else); Mentions of affairs, cheating, & broken hearts; Mentions of dating, boyfriends/girlfriends, & romances; A couple mentions of young women getting pregnant from “an act against their will”; A couple mentions of unwed mothers being looked upon as shameful and unfit for society; A mention of a boyfriend making a pass at his girlfriend’s sister; A mention of jealousy;
             *Note: Mentions of childbirth, screams, & pain (barely-above-not-detailed); A few mentions of a man unable to have biological children due to an injury as a child (no details given).

-Tracy Doyle
                                P.O.V. of Tracy & a handful of letters added-in
                                                        232 pages

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Pre Teens-

New Teens-

Early High School Teens-

Older High School Teens-

My personal Rating-

{ Trigger warning for those sensitive to adoption, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, & the babies being taken away from their mothers—sometimes without the mother having a choice. }

As adoption is near and dear to my heart, I found myself very interested in this book the more I read. I will say, thought, that like many Guidepost mysteries’ first books, I was a little lost with this one and all the characters and information I’m given right off the bat. There’s a lot of family trees and trying to figure out how the mystery name comes into play, but I think I kept up decent enough on everything. This book, by the ending, was kind of messy. Real life-like, I suppose, but messy. Readers that like family drama and secrets may like this one, but I found it very sad at times with the reality of the unwed mother home and young women being forced to give up their babies.

I’ll admit that I didn’t care for the message that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy is a “mistake” at the beginning. It’s regarded as “everyone makes mistakes” and no one is perfect, so we all need God’s saving grace, which is true, but I think back to the “Christy Miller” series when it talked about no child ever being an accident and that God knew that baby would be born—and what a miracle is it, that not even the angels can create a life. I read that as a pre-teen and it’s stuck with me all of these years.

Overall, I did find myself very interested in the mystery of this book and plan to at least read the next book in the series as I own it; past that, we’ll see if I’m interested enough to continue the series.

See y’all on Friday with a new review!