I Knew You by Name: The Search for My Lost Mother

by Peggy Barnes

Peggy Barnes has written a remarkable, wise, and generous memoir about her search for her birth mother, Pauline, a young woman from the back hills of Alabama. It takes a gutsy and determined person to embark upon such a quest, armed with nothing but a name. It takes a truly gifted writer to tell the story with such warmth and wit. Her story is their story: a deeply moving portrait of two women, separated by circumstances but united through the power of words. In I Knew You By Name, Peggy has written a gorgeous love letter to the courageous woman she never had a chance to know. I only wish Pauline could have read it, too. ---Stephanie Harrison, Author of Adaptation: From Short Story to Big Screen.

For sixty-five years all Peggy Barnes knew of her beginnings was what she could recall: herself at age two, a child with big feet and a vocabulary that included little baby talk. The only mother she ever knew claimed she never, ever cried. Then, Alabama unsealed the records of adoptive children’s births. Peggy learned she is the daughter of Pauline Miller, unwed daughter of a sharecropping family and the man for whom her mother ironed shirts.
The letters Pauline wrote back to the home from which she’d fled in shameful exile reveal her heartbreaking life. In lush Southern language laced with surprising wit, Peggy extrapolates from these letters—saved by an unknown cousin in the proverbial dust-covered trunk—to venerate the woman who gave her birth, uncovering striking similarities to the life she herself has lived. ---Nancy Pinard, Author of Shadow Dancing and Butterfly Soup.

171 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 19, 2015

About the author

Peggy Barnes is the author of the newly released memoir, I Knew You by Name: The Search for My Lost Mother.

Peggy worked as a freelance food and travel writer and restaurant critic. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. Her award-winning short stories have been widely published in literary magazines and provided full scholarships to major writers’ conferences. Excerpts from I Knew You by Name have been published in Halfway Down the Stairs, Foliate Oak and Gravel. Peggy lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband and two dogs.

Reviews

[Nanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a great deal. My writing coach recommended it to me as an example of a memoir about adoption. I am so glad the relative saved the letters of Peggy's mother. Twelve handwritten letters that give Peggy some clues into her mother's life and connects her to the hardships her mother had to deal with.
As an adoptee this is a heartbreaking story to me because Peggy was two years old when her mother gave her to the state agency to be put up for adoption. At two, a child would seem to me, have an even more difficult time dealing with adoption, because her birth mother would be in her child memories.
I think Peggy Barnes is a wonderful writer. I enjoyed her writing very much.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Where's my Mommy? Do you know my Mommy?"

Ohio author Peggy Barnes holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. Though her employment has been worked as a freelance food and travel writer and restaurant critic, she comes to this fine book as a memoir and the power of the book is so rich that hopefully she will continue writing in the novel format. Though she has published many short stories, this is her debut book.

There is now, and always has been, a keen interest in birth mothers versus adoptive mothers. Novels, films and plays have embraced the subject but this book by Peggy rings because it is her story. In her Prologue she introduces the circumstances that altered her life. `They said my parents were dead. They said I had big feet, that the special shoes cost too much with the Depression barely ended. They said I had no hair and no matter how much pink my new mother put on me, I looked like a boy. Adopting a two-year-old smack in the middle of the Big War was something they never expected to do. The best thing about me, they said, was-- I never, ever cried. My new daddy, George, was thirty, which everyone knew was way too old to conceive, so when the agency called and said, "Sorry, still no babies, but we've got this new kid," Margaret, who had been knitting booties for the last ten years, said, "We might as well take a look." In the viewing room, George snapped my first picture, dated December 23, 1941. The caption says, "So what?" and that tells you about the look on my face. How many times had I been fluffed up, dressed in that scratchy, starched dress, ready to rent? How many men holding a camera, after popping bright flashes, left with his frowning wife and never came back? I didn't know who birthed me, didn't know why I was standing in a scary room on my second Christmas. I would be told, on various occasions, I came from an orphanage, a series of foster homes, or Br'er Rabbit's cabbage patch. No point in asking why it took two years for someone to claim me. Dumb and ugly. What else? Then, when I was sixty-five, after my adoptive parents had died, the State of Alabama released my sealed birth record and I learned what they would not say. In the 1940s, it was okay to lie about your new kid being a bastard. But the part about not crying? Oh, that was true as anything, and after a series of what I call miracles I learned the reason why.'


With that same power of writing Peggy offers her search for her birth mother, Pauline. Or as the summary shares, `Peggy Barnes' recently unsealed birth certificate arrived just after she buried the woman who raised her. She discovered her entire life had been a lie. She was born at The Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers to a young woman from the back hills of Alabama--Miss Pauline Miller. Peggy says: "I'd always been told my birth parents were dead. At age sixty-five, the last thing I needed was another mother. But I wanted to find Pauline. If I could find out what happened to her, maybe I could answer some of the questions I had never understood about my own cracked-up life." During her long search, Peggy obtains diaries, letters and photographs that reveal Pauline's heartbreaking story. Peggy discovers much of her mother's life echoes her own. Here are their stories of: abandonment, addiction, estranged fathers, a truly evil stepmother, the churches that kicked them out and the churches that offered salvation. Chronicling their similar lives gives Peggy the courage to reveal her own hidden truths. Pauline's letters, written so long ago, teach Peggy to finally forgive herself. Deeply moving, yet laced with wit and humor, this is a daughter's love story to her mother.'

To review a book of this emotional power, one can only applaud. The story is extraordinary, all the more so because it is true. Peggy Barnes is a very fine writer and this book is one that everyone who has been on either side of the adoption process should read. No, make that EVERYONE should read. Highly Recommended.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I Knew You By Name is a hauntingly sad account of a woman searching for her biological mother. From the moment the story begins you are drawn deep into the Old South during and after the Great Depression. Peggy's husband encourages her to find her adoption and birth information, little does he know that it will send his wife on a desperate search across state lines and into a sorrow filled past.

Peggy's mother Pauline comes from a deeply unhappy home. She eventually disappears with baby Peggy and tries to give herself and her baby a better life. Unfortunately, as often happened in those early years of the 1900's, Pauline simply goes from one abusive relationship to another, while Peggy is adopted into a family who couldn't have children of their own.

Interspersed throughout the book are Pauline's letters to her silent, non responsive sister, stories from Peggy's life as she grows and becomes a mother herself and Peggy's thoughts and wishes for Pauline tumble down into the pages, making you ache for each woman in this book. Perhaps Peggy eventually did achieve peace, but she clearly shows that her biological family was tortured and in some cases, downright unpleasant.

There are many, many unanswered questions. I can't say that I will read this book again, but it has left an impression on my heart that I imagine I will feel for many months to come.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Surely God designed a spark between mothers and babies." With that thought Peggy Barnes takes your hand in hers and leads you into the swirling and often maddening world that was her search for her birth mother. At times divergent, and at other times braided tightly together, Peggy's life unfolds in the lap of her mother's. The reader is treated to an intimate view of life for a young unwed mother in Alabama just as WW II was beginning. Her daughter, Peggy grew up knowing only that she was adopted. Barnes takes the sketchiest of details, enriches them with painstaking research and mixes in brutal honesty about her own life to create a love letter to a mother she never met but always knew. This is a masterpiece work. You can't afford not to read it.

[Alia]

You never know when something from your past is going to come back to haunt you, and in this case Peggy is sixty five wondering where her life began. With her husband's encouragement she embarks on a journey to find her biological mother, Pauline.

Adoption is a difficult subject, most of the children have a void that can never be filled and the pain some parents go through having to give their children up. As a mother I would want what is best for my child but the struggle Pauline went through, trying to find a home for her and her child in the Great Depression, would break down the strongest person.

I was enveloped in this story and couldn't put it down. It turned into this amazing journey of the love between a mother and daughter.

[J.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lovely, lyrical memoir recounts the author's search for her biological mother. Barnes's writing is powerful and beautiful.

[Wordpainter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the book. I could almost hear the southern drawl I know the author has to have. You are taken along on her journey not only for her lost mother but also for herself.

[Elizabeth Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Echoes of a complex family

The story of the author's birthfamily was stripped of its shell and gave insight into the complex lives of these people. Reading this story felt like gathering pieces of a broken ceramic figure together to make whole person, but some pieces were never found.

As someone who lived with my birthmother for many months, it was easy to feel empathy for the characters and author. Life is not simple for many of us.

[Wendy Beckman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moving and Complex

I knew Peggy Barnes as a vivacious woman and fellow writer. I had no idea so many painful stories lay behind her smiling face. The multiple story lines, some of which were imagined, got confusing. However, Peggy grabs the reader's heart from the start and never let's go.

[Padgett Ratings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Name: The Search for My Lost Mother by Peggy Barnes is a brilliant writer.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great description. Seemed disjointed at times.