There are very few works of fiction (books, TV, cinema) that treat adoption sympathetically. Often we are treated to plot twists involving the sudden discovery of being adopted, the dangerous arrival of a birth mother in someone’s life, or early paternity coming home to roost for a man who, so the stories go, had no idea of it. A chip on the shoulder is given to an adoptee and birth parents are treated as inadequate, or over-demanding in pursuit of their selfish interests and an existential threat to the adopted person and their adoptive family.
