Author Talk and Book Signing - Patti Eddington - The Girl with Three Birthdays

Readers, writers, and those who have been adopted or in the foster system, as well as anyone interested in geneaology will want to join us for this free event.  Learn more about the publishing process and hear the author discuss her book, The Girl with Three Birthdays, a memoir filled with mystery following the author’s pursuit of her genealogy and uncovering family secrets.

Patti Eddington always knew she was adopted, and her beloved parents seemed amenable
enough to questions; but she never wanted to hurt them by expressing curiosity, so she
didn’t. 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 wasn’t actually her birthday? She believed it when her mother said she’d changed
it to protect her from the “nosy old biddies” who might try to discover her identity.
It wasn’t 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 interrogate 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 years; and 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 caseworker’s
one-day visit to Patti’s childhood home, The Girl With Three Birthdays tells the story of an
adoptee who always believed she was the answer to a couple’s seventeen-year journey to
become parents, until a manila envelope from a rural county court arrived and caused her
to question . . . everything.