Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye

Award-winning and best-selling author Lois Lowry explores issues surrounding adoption in this poignant novel.

Natalie Armstrong has everything: she’s smart and beautiful, has the perfect boyfriend, early acceptance to college, and a loving family. But the summer she turns seventeen, she finally decides to ask some unanswered questions: Who are her biological parents and why did they give her up when she was born?

These questions take her on a journey from the deep woods of Maine to the streets of New York City, from the pages of old phone books and a tattered yearbook photo to the realization that she might actually meet her biological mother face-to-face.

But as Natalie unearths the truth, is she prepared for the woman she might find?

• A Classic Adoption Story: Natalie has a loving family, but an unshakeable need to understand her origins drives her to uncover the mystery of her birth.
• A Journey of Teen Identity: A seventeen-year-old girl with a seemingly perfect life confronts the one question that could change everything: Who am I, really?
• Poignant Mother-Daughter Relationships: Natalie risks hurting the mother who raised her to find the mother who gave her away, exploring the complex bonds of family.
• Uncovering the Past: Follow the clues from a tattered yearbook photo and dusty phone books on a search that leads from small-town Maine to the streets of New York City.

"A sad and funny book about [a] . . . teenager who learns the meaning of loneliness and enters adulthood with the knowledge that one can indeed inherit the best of two worlds." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review