Linda Hoye’s new book, The Presence of Absence: A Story of Busyness, Brokenness and Being Beloved is an engaging, deeply personable part memoir/part meditation guide to facing the trauma of having her biological mother give her up at birth. Although she had caring adoptive parents, she had a deep longing to know more about the woman who gave birth to her. This is the event that drives the narrative and makes the book so compelling. This onis not a story that I read in one sitting, Rather, I savored it as it kept calling me to keep reading it. Linda pulls the reader into her deep pain and vulnerability through raw honesty and desire to search for answers. She is able to receive the adoption-related files which sends her on a path to learn more about her. Eventually she does reconnect with her biological family which is a highly emotional time. In time she learns to forgive this woman and to understand her plight. But finding peace and solitude are a conscious effort

The meditation writing is reminiscent of Henry Nouwen’s whom she quotes frequently. She taps into the universal theme of finding peace in learning to live in solitude as our lives are insanely busy and stressful. After retiring from her stressful job and moving back to Canada, she finds her solitude in gardening, canning, photography and sitting in the presence of a loving God of her understanding. “The awe of many eyes turned upward at the evening sky and the small world I see through the macro lens of my camera are both facets of the awe of creation. They satisfy. Something but not everything because it’s the Creator, more than the creation that I long for.”

Although I’m not an adoptee, I connected with her story on so many levels—the importance of a mother’s love, the depth of loss and abandonment and the lifegiving force of sitting with a. power greater than ourselves.

This book will touch many in a healing way, especially adoptees who are searching for answers and reconciliation of their pasts. ( )