If ever a cable series suggested its own sequel that promised to be just as or more captivating than the original, A Handmaid’s Tale would be it. And local writer Nadean Stone has provided a true-life look at how such a shocking dystopia can play out in the next generation.
In No Stone Unturned, the debut author and Coral Springs resident traces her 44-year search for her mother, who was among the hundreds of thousands of unwed mothers across Canada, from 1945 until the 1970s, forced to give up their babies for adoption. The Canadian government has only recently come to grips with its lead role in what became a program of stigmatization and illegal coercion, which provinces and territories carried out, largely in secret, with the help of religious and charitable organizations. Stone, one of the more than 600,000 babies deemed “illegitimate” in Canadian census records from the period, tells a tale that’s often raw with emotion, recounting a grim childhood and her winding, but determined journey to find her birth mother — and herself. A must-read in these times of forced family separations and dystopian fantasies come true.