Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Finding Home

This is the story of Dr. Hicks who was revered in his community for what he did for people. At the same time, was corrupt, stole from the dead, and sold babies out the back of clinic after telling some mothers their babies had died. This is also the story of Jane and others who were adopted out of the back of the clinic, and their search for their parentage. You may have seen the TV show on cable TV by the same name as the book.

I saw this book announced in a Yahoo news article which was quite well-written and intrigued me so much that I preordered it immediately. When I read the article, I presumed it was a trad published book from a Big 4 publishing house. Since when do major news outlets give free advertising to indie books?

I think this has been the very first time this has ever happened outside of brief mini articles applauding Sci-Fi bestseller indie novels that obtained trad deals like Wool or The Martian. From the nice cover of the book, the article managed to fool me very well.

Notice I have never watched the TLC documentary series but I do remember cable tv announcing commercials for it. This is the very first time I have ever heard of the Hicks clinic show more so I was entering the book with a completely open mind.

In a way, I feel torn about the book. On one hand, I applaud the author for sharing such a personal and difficult journey, alongside getting permission from other Hicks Clinic babies/birth mothers as they became known over the years to share their stories. It seems so unsettling to read the depravity of domestic abuse suffered from women as recently as 40 years ago and the huge strides women rights have advanced. This makes it hard to put myself in the shoes of the teenage birth mothers that gave up their babies without the proper legal paperwork or far more ominous, the social acceptance of violence against young men such as Charlie just because he was dating a young woman he liked by jealous villagers. Far worse, I also found it utterly reprehensible how patients that suffered blatant malpractice from Dr. Hicks didn't engage in a large scale lawsuit. The book hints there was a lot of corruption at the time but never really delves into what happened to him at the end other than he died in the early 1970's from leukemia.

While I enjoyed the author's voice and how she pours her difficult life story for all to see, this book was like a diamond in the rough so to speak. If she had hired a really good editor that specialized in crime memoirs to organize the chapters a whole deal better and close the haphazard loose ends, this book would have been really awesome.

As such, it feels sort of anticlimactic when we finally discover Jane locates the paternal side of her family after she gets a home DNA test just a few years ago, but we never find out if she located her potential mother or the whereabouts of Kittie's lost children. Dr. Hicks ends up facing a jury probably due to malpractice but the book doesn't even mention if he was declared guilty and served any time or only lost his license. We don't even find out if the clinic is still abandoned today or the locked office in the downtown residence owned by Dr. Hicks had anything useful such as medical records.

One thing that stroke me very odd about the book is that Jane has worked for the FBI according to the introduction, and while it would make sense she made a lot of rookie mistakes at first during her search, the fact she didn't have access to DNA tests that would have helped her discover the existence of her lost sibling a lot sooner seems odd. As a full-fledged FBI agent, the author would have been able to get a search warrant to visit Dr. Hick's office to search for incriminating evidence. If not just to locate babies that were illegally sold, to discover if the rumors are true he buried deceased babies somewhere and uncover them.

I also wondered if any of the Hicks babies suffered from horrible legal cases that afflict approximately 19,000 adopted Americans today where they are rendered legally stateless because there is no true proof the babies were even born in US soil in the first place because the birth certificates are forgeries. A lot of international adopted babies in the 60's and 70's entered the US with a birth certificate but no other solid proof of relinquishment of paternity from their birth mothers. It wasn't until after 9/11 when the US started to demand passports for American citizens to enter the country from both land borders. It would make a lot of sense at least one of these Hicks clinic babies would get tangled into a huge legal nightmare the instant they tried to get a US passport to travel abroad or vote in US elections. They might have even managed to get a passport and have a baby with a non US citizen abroad assuming their child obtained automatic US citizenship, only to discover consular officials deny their petition and they start a tedious legal battle to get a Green Card. I would have felt very curious to know if any of the Hick's Clinic babies suffered from this particular legal problem and the outcome.

If the book had been trad published, I would have been a lot harsher in my review because trad publishing houses would have hired a large set of eyes and an experienced ghost writer to polish the prose to fill out every loose end. As it is, despite being an imperfect book, I did enjoy reading it very much and learn more about such a dark chapter of US history that should not be forgotten.

3 1/2 stars! show less

I saw this book announced in a Yahoo news article which was quite well-written and intrigued me so much that I preordered it immediately. When I read the article, I presumed it was a trad published book from a Big 4 publishing house. Since when do major news outlets give free advertising to indie books?

I think this has been the very first time this has ever happened outside of brief mini articles applauding Sci-Fi bestseller indie novels that obtained trad deals like Wool or The Martian. From the nice cover of the book, the article managed to fool me very well.

Notice I have never watched the TLC documentary series but I do remember cable tv announcing commercials for it. This is the very first time I have ever heard of the Hicks clinic show more so I was entering the book with a completely open mind.

In a way, I feel torn about the book. On one hand, I applaud the author for sharing such a personal and difficult journey, alongside getting permission from other Hicks Clinic babies/birth mothers as they became known over the years to share their stories. It seems so unsettling to read the depravity of domestic abuse suffered from women as recently as 40 years ago and the huge strides women rights have advanced. This makes it hard to put myself in the shoes of the teenage birth mothers that gave up their babies without the proper legal paperwork or far more ominous, the social acceptance of violence against young men such as Charlie just because he was dating a young woman he liked by jealous villagers. Far worse, I also found it utterly reprehensible how patients that suffered blatant malpractice from Dr. Hicks didn't engage in a large scale lawsuit. The book hints there was a lot of corruption at the time but never really delves into what happened to him at the end other than he died in the early 1970's from leukemia.

While I enjoyed the author's voice and how she pours her difficult life story for all to see, this book was like a diamond in the rough so to speak. If she had hired a really good editor that specialized in crime memoirs to organize the chapters a whole deal better and close the haphazard loose ends, this book would have been really awesome.

As such, it feels sort of anticlimactic when we finally discover Jane locates the paternal side of her family after she gets a home DNA test just a few years ago, but we never find out if she located her potential mother or the whereabouts of Kittie's lost children. Dr. Hicks ends up facing a jury probably due to malpractice but the book doesn't even mention if he was declared guilty and served any time or only lost his license. We don't even find out if the clinic is still abandoned today or the locked office in the downtown residence owned by Dr. Hicks had anything useful such as medical records.

One thing that stroke me very odd about the book is that Jane has worked for the FBI according to the introduction, and while it would make sense she made a lot of rookie mistakes at first during her search, the fact she didn't have access to DNA tests that would have helped her discover the existence of her lost sibling a lot sooner seems odd. As a full-fledged FBI agent, the author would have been able to get a search warrant to visit Dr. Hick's office to search for incriminating evidence. If not just to locate babies that were illegally sold, to discover if the rumors are true he buried deceased babies somewhere and uncover them.

I also wondered if any of the Hicks babies suffered from horrible legal cases that afflict approximately 19,000 adopted Americans today where they are rendered legally stateless because there is no true proof the babies were even born in US soil in the first place because the birth certificates are forgeries. A lot of international adopted babies in the 60's and 70's entered the US with a birth certificate but no other solid proof of relinquishment of paternity from their birth mothers. It wasn't until after 9/11 when the US started to demand passports for American citizens to enter the country from both land borders. It would make a lot of sense at least one of these Hicks clinic babies would get tangled into a huge legal nightmare the instant they tried to get a US passport to travel abroad or vote in US elections. They might have even managed to get a passport and have a baby with a non US citizen abroad assuming their child obtained automatic US citizenship, only to discover consular officials deny their petition and they start a tedious legal battle to get a Green Card. I would have felt very curious to know if any of the Hick's Clinic babies suffered from this particular legal problem and the outcome.

If the book had been trad published, I would have been a lot harsher in my review because trad publishing houses would have hired a large set of eyes and an experienced ghost writer to polish the prose to fill out every loose end. As it is, despite being an imperfect book, I did enjoy reading it very much and learn more about such a dark chapter of US history that should not be forgotten.

3 1/2 stars! show less

I sometimes had a very hard time following the "who, what, where and how". I somehow couldn't keep track of what actually happened when and people showed up at the beginning of a chapter, like they had already been introduced in the previous pages. I think a professional editor would have helped tremendously.

Super devastating and dark memoir