You Belong to Us

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On April 5, 1970, Molly McCaffrey was born in a Catholic hospital and given up for adoption when she was six weeks old. Nearly thirty years later, she met her birthmother who had spent the time since McCaffrey’s birth working at that same hospital, in that same ward—labor and delivery—wondering what had become of the baby she had long ago named Anne Marie.

But something else occurred shortly after McCaffrey’s birth. Her birthmother married her birthfather. And together they had four more children, giving McCaffrey an entire biological family she didn’t know existed. A family that owned a biker bar. A family that karaoked together. A family that gave each other guns at Christmas. A family that she had virtually nothing in common with.

YOU BELONG TO US tells the story of McCaffrey’s attempt to connect and find common ground across that span of years as well as class and educational lines. The book follows more than a decade in the lives of her unconventional family and asks the question that lies at the heart of adoption: Do we belong to the people with whom we share our blood? Or do we belong to those who raise us?