Gary Diamond, an American-trained developmental pediatrician, has along with professional colleagues over the past 15 years counseled and traveled to orphanages around the world in the service of adoptive parents, interested in evaluating the child pre-adoption in his/her native setting, often being in foster care or orphanages in a variety of countries in Eastern Europe and Central America. The book is a collection of 25 true accounts of adoption, post adoption and adolescent and adult experiences with adoption, and presents a unique chronicle of the life cycle of the adoptive family and the adopted individual, with the added dimension of actual accounts of orphanage life. The book, and the stories within, are a chronicle of an individual's search for identity, which is a universal theme. The book originates in Israel, where adoptive families actually send physicians, trained in child development, to countries to examine children offered for adoption, enabling adoption professionals to acquire long-standing and intimate insights, into the process of adoption, from its very early stages, when institutionalized children are first exposed to visiting professionals and prospective adoptive parents