Not knowing your history leaves you rootless. Jane Blasio dug into her hidden history, found her roots, and is now planted. Jane writes her story in Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Find Home. She worked with TLC as an investigator on the TLC Docu-Series, Taken at Birth. The series was interesting, but I wanted to know more about Jane. Her book fills in the blanks but leaves you wanting a little more. However, that is the nature of Jane’s story.

This story begins and ends in North Georgia in and around the town of McCaysville, Georgia. Jane Blasio digs around the town, trying to find documents and truth about Dr. Thomas Hicks. The paths she takes us down are dusty and confusing, much like the pig trails of North Georgia. These were pre-GPS days, and she often found herself lost, but the twist and turns were all part of a bigger plan. Jane did more than find out that Dr. Hicks sold her for $1000; she helped many others with their exact origin.

Jane exhumed the awful truth about Dr. Hicks and his black-market clinic. Then she helped other stolen Georgia babies find their roots. The TLC program starts with Jane’s story but meanders through the lives of other Hick’s babies. I wanted to know the rest of Jane’s story and her book delivers.

In Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Find Home, Blasio takes us on a road trip from Akron to Georgia several times. We are along for the ride from her first visit to McCaysville in the 1990s to her final destination.

Her book focuses on her decades-long hard, scrabbled search. Imagine Jane looking in dusty windows in a small, suspicious southern town. She pried up truth from a community that did not like to share but protect its secrets. Picture her trying to ask the townsfolk questions. At the end of the book, Jane rethinks the early days of her search:

 “If I had to do it over again, I’d drive into McCaysville and walk right into that small diner and ask all the right questions, make all the right moves, and eat my breakfast without worry. I’d roll that town up and put it in my pocket as though it were mine.” (211)

She found peace and danced upon the graves of those who had robbed her. Her dancing was not vengeance. She had left that to God. She danced with joy, for she knew what she had gained in this process. You will enjoy getting to know Jane. I know I did. Her writing left me feeling like I had met a long-lost friend.

I connected with Jane on many not-so-obvious levels. We both grew up near Lake Erie and were born in the 1960s. Here are some differences. I was born in Buffalo in Children’s Hospital. Dr. Hicks handed the four-pound Jane out the back door of his black-market clinic. I knew one side of my extended family, but knew nothing of my father’s side. I still long to know my bio grandmother, but Jane never knew either side of her family. In my teens, I moved to North Georgia, found God and found home. Jane came to North Georgia in her 20s to find her home and also found God. She discovered a legacy of faith and knew that someone had prayed for her to come home.

Jane gained more than the knowledge of her parentage. In her brief but affecting final chapters, she finds her people. In a GPS-deprived search, Jane made many wrong turns before but winded up exactly where she was supposed to be. She found a family she thought was hers for years until DNA proved her wrong. Jane found a woman with no relation to her who loved her like a daughter. “Carlynn taught me so much, but mostly she loved me and held me like a mother holds her daughter and tells her it will be all right. I had never known that before her” (214). Her biological nor her adoptive mom was incapable of loving her that way. Her journey was like a lost day on a red clay and gravel road with many unexpected stops.

She found her bio family after the detour. DNA proved it. She began sprouting roots in North Georgia when she found pieces of her family. The sound of the large wind chimes in Suches at her family home keeps bringing her back to her roots. Her language is matter-of-fact but also lyrical. Ernest Hemingway said of memoir, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Her northern raising gave her concrete words, but her Southern soul is lyrical. Listen to these words:

Blasio writes:

 “The invitation to visit here was a gift to me, and I listened as the breeze lilted through the chimes, as though it had as lightly upturned chin, gently challenging them to sing to me, to sing a new song. As the sun disappeared and the chimes kept on, the challenge was fulfilled with a serenade that stretched across those fields, rolling for some distance.” (168) 

She lost a great deal on her trips back and forth from Ohio to Georgia, but that was the price of passage. She admitted walking away from important relationships, including her relationship with God. Jane was on a journey – her authentic path. She became rooted and grounded. As her Georgia family was always there, so was her God. She was looking for one thing, but found so much more.

For a first published memoir, this is a remarkable success. Jane’s story will help others in ways she will never know. A mentor told me that when I write from my head, it connects to the mind. When I write from my heart, I will connect to another heart. This line connected my heart to Jane’s:

I found where I belonged. It took the journey of searching, not the actual DNA, to find who I am. I’m a child of God. He knows my name, and He placed me in this world. He knew where I should be and who I belonged to all along. I’m His.” (213)