The Promise I Kept

by Adele Rickerby

In 1991, unable to have a second child because of a medical problem and struggling to cope in a failing marriage, New Zealander Adele Rickerby decided to take her future in her hands by adopting a child from Romania. The misguided policies of the recently-deposed Ceasescu government on family planning had led to the birth of an estimated 100,000 unwanted babies in that country.

The Promise I Kept is Adele’s story of her nightmare journey halfway round the world to find and adopt a baby, to negotiate her way through the barriers created by red tape and corrupt officialdom and finally to carry her tiny new daughter safely home to a life where she could be properly loved and cared for.

55 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

I came from a large, impoverished family and my mother died of cancer when I was thirteen. After finishing my nursing degree and doing some world travelling, I moved to Australia and now live in the beautiful city of Toowoomba. I raised my two daughters as a single mum.

Whilst I was in Romania by myself after the revolution adopting a baby girl from an orphanage, I kept a journal. My book is based on the journal, and I had been wanting to write it for twenty-three years.

Reviews

[Ronald Mackay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adele Rickerby’s candid and heartfelt memoir is about more than a single promise. It is about the courageous path taken by a woman who needs to be to be true not only to herself, but also to the family within which she was brought up, to her own daughter, and to the four-month old child she rescued from Romania in the early ‘90s.

From an early age, Adele Rickerby was confronted with challenges that she was forced to overcome alone: the death of her mother when she was only 12 years old, the dearth of an opportunity to bid her mother goodbye, falling heir to the role of parenting a younger brother and taking care of the home and family corner store. All on top of school and homework.

Unable to have a second child after her first daughter was born, she decides to seek consolation from loneliness and an insensitive husband by adopting a child to be her second daughter and a friend and companion for her first-born.

With admirable courage, tenacity and persistence, the author flies halfway round the world to Romania which has just survived a revolution and is in the throes of returning to a Western democracy. There, she plans to adopt one of the many thousand children orphaned and abandoned as a result of revolutionary tumult, poverty, political corruption and sheer confusion.

Adele Rickerby’s narrative justifying subtitle kicks in here: A mother’s journey to save a child from the poverty and squalor of post-Cold War Romania.

With remarkable calmness, objectivity and brevity, the author captures the chaotic essence of a post-revolutionary society. Despite the foreignness of the culture, the language and the bureaucracy, Adele Rickerby is able to locate a needy child, have the birth-mother to agree to the adoption, weather the convolutions of the bureaucratic system and leave with her new daughter, Natasha. But not before she has made a promise to the birthmother that she will offer Natasha a better life.

To fulfil that promise, she first must make a better life for herself and so she steps out of a loveless marriage and embarks on a courageous and thankfully successful journey as the single mother of two.

Adele Rickerby is a woman with admirable fortitude.

[Sandra Flett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love memoirs , especially of ordinary women doing remarkable things to help others in desperate situations and this book was right down my alley . Growing up as a child and teenager in the 1980s and 1990s , I would hear bits and pieces about the " Romanian orphans " . And so to read a true story about a woman who rescued a little baby Romanian girl captivated me .
I only wish it was much longer . I read it in about 2.5 hours one summer afternoon and was sad that I didn't know the rest of the story . More please Adele Rickerby !

[Adele Rickerby]

This is a powerfully and vividly written story.- Tony Tingle-editor.

A superb story of what can be accomplished when one sets a goal and has the burning desire to carry one through the obstacles. - Kelly Proctor.

An interesting story about a courageous woman. A must read for anybody contemplating international adoption.- Kaiden.

You read this from cover to cover. She faced and conquered many problems and challenges with patience and doggedness. - Mark Johnston.

A well-crafted story. I am happy to recommend it to many who are fascinated by personal memoirs. Colby Pearce.

A must-read for anyone who adopted from Romania or anywhere. It is haunting.... Jonquil Graham.

This is an amazing book. Costin Hewitt.