Finding Mary Smith

What if one phone call revealed that everything you knew about your family—and yourself—was built on a secret?

At age 52, Al Isaacs learned by accident that he had been adopted. His adoptive parents, both suffering from dementia, could no longer give him answers, and nearly everyone else who had known the truth was gone. All he had was a startling revelation, incomplete records, and one tantalizing clue: his birth mother had been an entertainer in New York.

What followed was a remarkable DNA and genealogy detective story.

Using DNA testing, genetic genealogy, old records, newspaper archives, and help from search angels, Al began unraveling the circumstances of his gray market adoption. The search led to biological relatives he never knew existed, including a half-sister who had spent years looking for him, and eventually to Mary Smith—a teenage folk singer from Flint, Michigan, whose extraordinary journey took her to New York's Greenwich Village music scene before their lives were separated for more than five decades.

Finding Mary Smith is an award-winning memoir about adoption, family secrets, identity, DNA, genealogy, and the complicated meaning of family. Told with warmth, humor, and honesty, it follows a late-discovery adoptee's search for the truth, from a shocking phone call to an emotional reunion that once seemed impossible.

Part mystery, part family history, and part love letter to the people who help us discover who we are, Finding Mary Smith asks a deceptively simple question:

How much of your life can change when you finally learn where you came from?