The Girl with Three Birthdays

Patti Eddington always knew she was adopted, and her beloved parents seemed amenable enough to questionsbut she never wanted to hurt them by expressing curiosity, so she didnt. The story of her mother cutting off and dying her hair when she was a toddler? She thought it was eccentric and funny, nothing more. When she discovered at fifteen that her birthday wasnt actually her birthday? She believed it when her mother said shed changed it to protect her from the nosy old biddies who might try to discover her identity. It wasnt until decades later, when a genealogy test led Patti to her biological family (including an aunt with a shocking story) and the discovery of yet another birthday, that she really began to integrate what she thought she knew about her origins. Determined to know the truth, she finally petitioned a court to unseal records that had been locked up for almost sixty yearsand began to put the pieces of her past together, bit by painstaking bit. Framed by a brief but poignant 1963 Report of Investigation based on a caseworkers one-day visit to Pattis childhood home, The Girl With Three Birthdays tells the story of an adoptee who always believed she was the answer to a couples seventeen-year journey to become parents, until a manila envelope from a rural county court arrived and caused her to question . . . everything.