When I started writing my memoir, Fortunate Son – the Story of Baby Boy Francis, I knew it had potential because the story was fascinating. It also happened to be true.
I was adopted as an infant, had wonderful parents and a wonderful childhood, never searched for my birth mother, and never would have. I learned her identity and the story of my birth only because of litigation initiated in four courts in two states in an effort to identify and find me. The lawyers who were looking didn’t know who or where I was, but they knew my birth mother’s son had a potential claim to the fortune left by her grandfather, who owned oil wells all over the country as well as the only facility in the Western Hemisphere that made fluoride for toothpaste.
A week after I learned about the circumstances of my birth, my first grandchild was born under almost identical circumstances. My birth mother got pregnant in the fall of her freshman year of college, my daughter in the fall of her sophomore year. The circumstances were the same, but the times were not. My daughter, unlike my mother, got to keep her baby, who’s grown into an extraordinary young lady.
So I knew I had the makings of a good story. The challenge was to get readers who didn’t know any of the main characters – my parents, birth mother, daughter, granddaughter, and me – to care about us, find us interesting, and feel that they knew us. To achieve this, I decided to include anecdotes about all of us. Some of the anecdotes are no longer than a sentence or two, but I chose them because I thought they revealed something important about us.
My adoptive mother had a wonderful sense of humor, and I wrote that she loved to dress up at Halloween, put on a mask, get down on her knees, and trick the neighbors into thinking she was a child wanting candy.
My adoptive father was the finest man I've ever known and also one of the most modest. I wrote that he said he volunteered for the Navy in World War II because in the Army you had to sleep on the ground, but after the war ended he served as a Boy Scout leader for 60 years and spent more than 1,000 nights sleeping on the ground in a tent.
My birth mother had to surrender me for adoption when she was only eighteen and never saw me again. I wrote about her late-night conversations with her sister years later when she wondered what had become of the baby she had to give away, the baby she knew by then would be her only child.
My daughter, who made the brave decision to have and keep my granddaughter, was mature and fearless from the beginning. I wrote that she modeled children's clothes when she was four, walking down the runway as instructed, and was chosen the same year to be the barker in her preschool circus. No nerves, no fear, and everyone heard every word. She was never a quiet child; still isn't.
My beautiful granddaughter, like her mother, is precocious and inquisitive about the world. I wrote that, exactly 20 years after my daughter was the circus barker, my granddaughter played the same role in the same circus. Not long afterwards, she asked me one day, “Papa, am I taller than a penguin?” At the time she was taller than some but shorter than others, but now she's taller than all of them, even the Emperor, the tallest penguin on Earth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brooks Eason loves stories, reading and writing them, hearing and telling them. He also loves music, dogs, and campfires as well as his family and friends. His latest book is Fortunate Son – the Story of Baby Boy Francis, an amazing memoir about his adoption, discovery of the identity of his birth mother, and much more.
Eason has practiced law in Jackson for more than 35 years but has resolved to trade in writing briefs for writing books. He lives with his wife Carrie and their two elderly rescue dogs, Buster and Maddie, and an adopted stray cat named Count Rostov for the central character in A Gentleman in Moscow, the novel by Amor Towles. In their spare time, the Easons host house concerts, grow tomatoes, and dance in the kitchen. Eason, who has three children and four grandchildren, is also the author of Travels with Bobby - Hiking in the Mountains of the American West about hiking trips with his best friend. Visit Brooks online at www.brookseason.com. WordCrafts Press is an independent publishing company headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Visit WordCrafts online at www.wordcrafts.net.
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