Missing Mila, Finding Family

by Ward, Margaret E.

• ISBN13: 9780292729087
• ISBN10: 0292729081
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

In the spring of 1983, a North American couple who were hoping to adopt a child internationally received word that if they acted quickly, they could become the parents of a boy in an orphanage in Honduras. Layers of red tape dissolved as the American Embassy there smoothed the way for the adoption. Within a few weeks, Margaret Ward and Thomas de Witt were the parents of a toddler they named Nelson--an adorable boy whose prior life seemed as mysterious as the fact that government officials in two countries had inexplicably expedited his adoption. In Missing Mila, Finding Family, Margaret Ward tells the poignant and compelling story of this international adoption and the astonishing revelations that emerged when Nelson's birth family finally relocated him in 1997. After recounting their early years together, during which she and Tom welcomed the birth of a second son, Derek, and created a family with both boys, Ward vividly recalls the upheaval that occurred when members of Nelson's birth family contacted them and sought a reunion with the boy they knew as Roberto. She describes how their sense of family expanded to include Nelson's Central American relatives, who helped her piece together the lives of her son's birth parents and their clandestine activities as guerrillas in El Salvador's civil war. In particular, Ward develops an internal dialogue with Nelson's deceased mother Mila, an elusive figure whose life and motivations she tries to understand.

Author Biography

Professor of German Emerita, Margaret E. Ward taught at Wellesley College from 1971 to 2010. A prize in her name is awarded each year to an outstanding senior major in Women and Gender Studies in recognition of her contribution to the establishment of that department. Ward has held NEH and Fulbright fellowships and has published on Bertolt Brecht, post-1945 political drama, and women's biography, including a book on Fanny Lewald, a nineteenth-century novelist and advocate of women's education. She divides her time between Harrisville, New Hampshire, and Bonita Springs, Florida.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Prologue. Dalila's Hammock: San Salvador, El Salvador, February 2005	p. 1
Our Story
Adoption: Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May-June 1983	p. 9
Rediscovery: Massachusetts, August-December 1997	p. 48
Reunion: Heredia, Costa Rica, December 1997	p. 82
Their Stories
Putting the Pieces Together, 1952-1992	p. 105
Interlude. Mi flor favorita/My Favorite Flower	p. 152
Imagining Mila: New Hampshire, Summer 2007	p. 154
Interlude. La Guerra verdadera/The True War	p. 197
The Disappeared Children of El Salvador	p. 198
Interlude. My Perfect World	p. 232
Epilogue. One Story	p. 233
Abbreviations and Acronyms	p. 245
Family Names	p. 249
Notes	p. 251
References and Suggested Reading	p. 269
Index	p. 273
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