I Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest

Elaine Ross grew up knowing she was adopted. Brought into a loving family on the Canadian prairies at eleven months old, she felt secure in the life she was given and the parents who chose her. For many years, that story felt complete.

Gradually curiosity took hold. Believing she had two older brothers, she began a decades long search for the family she had come from, following incomplete records, official rejections, and long silences.

What she discovered was unsettling. She was born in 1956 in a mental institution where her birth mother lived with severe mental illness during an era when women were routinely institutionalized and inadequately treated, and their stories erased.

After meeting members of her birth family, a visit to her mother's grave resulted in a moment of clarity that she hadn't been looking for but couldn't ignore. An unexpected connection with the woman who brought her into the world left Ross with the subtle yet compelling need to follow the traces of her mothers life.

I Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest is an emotionally honest story of one woman's pursuit to discover where she came from, and to give voice to the mother she found. Ross explores the grief of adoption for everyone involved, and the reasons why so many adoptees feel the drive to find their families of origin.