Missing Mila, Finding Family

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 Ward's contribution to the establishment of that department. She 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.

• AcknowledgmentsPrologue. Dalila's Hammock: San Salvador, El Salvador, February 2005Part One. Our Story Chapter One. Adoption: Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May–June 1983Chapter Two. Rediscovery: Massachusetts, August–December 1997Chapter Three. Reunion: Heredia, Costa Rica, December 1997Part Two. Their Stories Chapter Four. Putting the Pieces Together, 1952–1992Interlude. Mi flor favorita/My Favorite FlowerChapter Five. Imagining Mila: New Hampshire, Summer 2007Interlude. La Guerra verdadera/The True WarChapter Six. The Disappeared Children of El SalvadorInterlude. Perfect WorldEpilogue. One StoryAppendix I. Abbreviations and AcronymsAppendix II. Family NamesNotesReferences and Suggested Reading

"The greatest contribution of this book, aside from the fact that the Ward and Escobar/Coto families' stories are compelling in their own right, is the telling of an ultimately courageous narrative about what is possible in the aftermath of atrocious human rights violations in Central America. Not just gangs of torturers, mafias of demobilized militaries, the victories of neoliberalism, and mass migration, but rich, complex lives marked by possibility and - if one can say it without being trite - healing." - Laura Briggs, University of Massachusetts "One of the most remarkable books I've read this year is Missing Mila, Finding Family by Margaret Ward, which leaves me with a strong sense that the adoption debate could be - should be - different. It is also a profoundly particular - and hence human - story about how two families, one Salvadoran, one in the U.S., work through their understanding of a wrenching series of events, including death, adoption, and the loss of a child, and somehow come out the other side with an extraordinary measure of grace...The greatest contribution of this book, though, aside from the fact that the Ward's and Escobar/Coto's families' stories are compelling in their own right, is the telling of an ultimately courageous narrative about what is possible in the aftermath of atrocious human rights violations in Central America." - Laura Briggs, somebodyschildren.com