Within the initial five minutes of their first phone call, Raziel's birth mother erected a well-rehearsed sounding defense designed to discourage further questions: "I was attacked by a stranger." The adoption file, however, had painted a rosier picture, claiming she'd had a fiancé who simply stalled too long in marrying her when the pregnancy was discovered. In trying to sort out what really happened, two more birth father possibilities surfaced. Which story was really true, and who was her mother trying to protect by lying about how she was conceived?

Echoes, Lies, and Enduring Mysteries is a psychotherapist's memoir of adoption, discovery, disappointment, and dilemmas during a year of finding and communicating with her birth mother. After a life-long search for belonging and a secreted soul's need to matter, Raziel Bearn learns that unearthing a hidden past can be disturbing and disorienting.