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Book Summary and Reviews of You'll Forget This Ever Happened by Laura L. Engel

You'll Forget This Ever Happened by Laura L. Engel

You'll Forget This Ever Happened

Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s

by Laura L. Engel

  • Readers' Rating (11):
  • Published:
  • May 2022, 344 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Full of both aching sadness and soaring joy, You'll Forget This Ever Happened is a shocking exposé of a shameful part of our country's recent past—and a poignant tale of a mother's enduring love.

Mississippi, 1967. It's the Summer of Love, yet unwed mothers' maternity homes are flourishing, secret closed adoptions are routine, and many young women still have no voice.

In You'll Forget This Ever Happened, Laura Engel takes us back to the Deep South during the turbulent 1960s to explore the oppression of young women who have committed the socially unacceptable crime of becoming pregnant without a ring on their finger. After being forced to give up her newborn son for adoption, Engel lives inside a fortress of silent shame for fifty years—but when her secret son finds her and her safe world is cracked open, those walls crumble.

Are you still a mother even if you have not raised your child? Can the mother/child bond survive years of separation? How deep is the damage caused by buried family secrets and shame? Engel asks herself these and many other questions as she becomes acquainted with the son she never knew, and seeks the acceptance and forgiveness she has long denied herself.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"You'll Forget This Ever Happened is a wrenching memoir that testifies to the unbreakable bond between a mother and their child; it contains an indictment of past practices regarding adoption." —Suzanne Kamata, Forward Review

"If Anne Tyler had written a memoir about being forced to give up her son for adoption in the 1960s, it would read like You'll Forget This Ever Happened. Laura L. Engel is immediately likable and draws you in with her warmth, but her gorgeous prose immediately transports you to the Deep South in the 60s. As a reader, you'll keep turning page after page; as a woman, you'll want to hug her. This is a brave memoir that'll make you weep happy and sad tears." —Lauren Cross, author

"Heart-wrenching but filled with purpose, this book satisfyingly unreels our emotions to the bright sounds of the 60s. Laura's richly detailed story makes us laugh, cry, gasp and pray for those caught in that cruel time warp that plunged unwed mothers into the lowest, loathsome level of 'proper' society. A film, of course!" —Linda Bergman, Screenwriter, Producer, Educator

"Nearly fifty years after giving up her baby, the past finds her. When Engel's son, now grown and with a family of his own, locates her, the journey moves from trauma and despair to joy, and through a bittersweet, imperfect healing. Engel describes it all with poignancy and honesty. This book is achingly lovely, written by a woman who knows her heart, makes up her mind, finds her way, creating a life on her own terms." —Lisa Shapiro author of No Forgotten Fronts: From Classrooms to Combat

"Devastating and stunning—alive with attention to the abundance of the heart—this memoir will stay with you." —Julie Maloney, award-winning author of A Matter of Chance

"Laura Engel tells her emotional and compelling story of becoming a pregnant, unwed teen in the Deep South in the 1960s, being shut away in a home for wayward women, and being forced to give up her first son to adoption. Then, after years of shame and guilt, she tells the heartwarming and inspiring story of reuniting with her long-lost son after forty-nine years. A powerful true story of historical, societal, and cultural stigmas against women, the complicated but strong bonds of family, the difficult road to self-acceptance and forgiveness, and the fierce love between a mother and her lost, but never forgotten, child." —Nina Neilson Little, author of Spirit Baby: Travels Through China on the Long Road to Motherhood

"You'll Forget This Ever Happened will break your heart and exhilarate your spirit. Honest and vulnerable while offering hope and love, Engel speaks to and for many young women of a generation that had little choice on how to cope with teen pregnancy at a time when shame was buried deep and heartbreak was never to be spoken of. Engel's prose is lyrical, and her storytelling is filled with rich and imaginative details. Endearing and heartwarming, this book is a treasure." —Madonna Treadway, award-winning author of Six Healing Questions: A Gentle Path to Facing Loss of a Parent

"You'll Forget This Ever Happened is a deeply moving, heart-wrenching, and visually alive memoir exposing the pain Engel experienced after becoming pregnant at a young age and being forced by her southern parents to give up her child. Ultimately the story is one of resilience, forgiveness, and acceptance, with an ending made for a movie." —Roberta S. Kuriloff, author of Everything Special, Living Joy

This information about You'll Forget This Ever Happened was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Laura L. Engel

Laura L. Engel originally hails from Biloxi, Mississippi but moved to San Diego, California over fifty years ago. In 2015 she retired from a thirty-five-year career in the corporate world with plans to quietly catch up on hobbies and travel with her husband, Gene. Within a year an unexpected miracle took: her firstborn son—the child she'd been forced to relinquish to adoption in 1967—found her. After that, Laura stopped guarding her painful secret and started telling the world about the miracle of meeting her son. Laura is currently President of the San Diego Memoir Writers Association. She is also an active member of the International Women's Writing Guild and a member of San Diego Writers Ink, San Diego Writer's Festival, and SD Writers and Editors Guild. She has five adult children and ten cherished grandchildren. Check out her website at www.lauralengel.com. She lives in El Cajon, CA. Visit her at lauralengel.com

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