Raymona’s Journey

Fifteen-year-old Raymona Sutherlin imagined herself riding the train from her rural Indiana town to somewhere new and exciting. But on one fateful summer day in 1943, she realized that was not to be. Raymona must care for her four siblings and tend to the house and farm when her mother dies giving birth to her seventh child and her father runs off. She manages well until baby Joy dies and Social Services is notified. Without an adult to supervise the family, the siblings are split up and sent to separate foster homes. In Raymona’s new home, she meets the handsome and charismatic Douglas, who takes advantage of her naiveté. Her foster parents send her to a facility for unwed mothers when they discover she is pregnant. Now, Raymona must make the most difficult decision of her young life. Although a work of fiction, Gary E. Kirby breathes life into the story with the facts of his own adoption and his search for closure and information about his life before being adopted. Raymona’s Journey embodies life, death, joy, and sadness beyond anything a fifteen-year-old girl should endure. 'In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are, and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning; no matter what our attainments in life, there is the most disquieting loneliness.'-Alex Haley 3