Beneath a Tall Tree

A few months back I got involved in an interesting discussion on the Adoptee Forum regarding ancestry and adoptees. Basically, the person who initiated the thread posed the question of how other adoptees responded when people questioned their ethnic background. Do you tell them their adoptive families background or (if you know) your biological families' or both? The posters (majority of whom were adoptees) allowed this adoptive parent to "hijack" their thread when I asked a question about my 7 yo son's cultural project at school. Anyhow, I found all responses to be very insightful and I thought a great deal about the topic. I ended up doing an Amazon search to see if there was anything out there on adoption and genealogy. I found a great book by Jean Strauss, "Beneath a Tall Tree" who also wrote "Birthright" (another well written book). Without going into too much detail, she starts as grade school student with a family tree project feeling uncertain and confused because of her adopted status and ends up as a 40 something year old adult with a complete family tree integrating her adoptive and biological families. I would recommend it to anyone.