"E. Kay Trimberger integrates memoir, science, and social science to create a compelling story and cautionary tale, exploring through reflection and research her thirty-five-year journey in California as a white single mother of an adopted black/biracial son. When her son was twenty-six, Trimberger helped him reunite with his Louisiana birth families. The families' embrace, and their openness about their lives, lit the spark that led to this book. Trimberger learned that many of her son's cognitive and psychological strengths, and his difficulties with addiction, mirrored those of his birth parents, with whom he had had no previous contact. As a result of this reunion, she began to investigate the role of genetic heritage in adoptees. While most adoption memoirs and social science analysis focus on the loss experienced by adoptees, Creole Son looks at the continuities between birth families and adoptees even when they have never met, and the challenge adoptive parents face in raising a child with traits unlike those of their own birth family. Using her academic training as a sociologist, Trimberger discovered the field of behavioral genetics, where much of the research is done on adoptive families, comparing over time the psychological and cognitive traits of adoptees with those of their birth parents, adoptive parents, and birth and adopted siblings.

Findings stress the importance of both biological heritage and environment-and their interaction-in shaping adult outcomes. Adoption researchers have made little use of these research findings. In contrast, Trimberger integrates her story and that of her son with the findings of specific behavioral genetics studies, giving equal weight to the impact of the environment in Berkeley in the 1980s and 1990s-easy access to drugs, a culture condoning their use, a mother ignorant about substance abuse, and a failed experiment in communal living. In an afterword, Trimberger's son, Marc, now in his late thirties, discusses how her narrative and research have helped him better understand his personal journey. 'Creole Son' includes a strong Louisiana presence in Marc and Trimberger's cultural explorations and their interaction with his biological extended families, Creole and Cajun. These experiences lead Trimberger to postulate a new type of extended family, one that integrates adoptive and biological kin-a model that goes beyond current notions of open adoption. While based on only one family's experience, Creole Son addresses issues of contemporary relevance: the possibility, but difficulty, in crossing race and class boundaries; the increasing diversity of family forms; the impact of drugs and violence in the environment; and curiosity about how nature and nurture interact to make us who we are as individuals. It analyzes the implications for all parents, adoptive and natural"--.