Tree of Strangers
“It packs a wallop” - John Campbell, TVNZ
“…hard to put down” - Linda Burgess, ANZL
“…a book of ... social and literary importance.” - Caroline Barron, Kete
What does it mean to grow up adopted in New Zealand? How do you make a life when there is no history to build from?
Remarkable, moving, beautifully written, Tree of Strangers is a gripping account of a search for identity in a country governed by adoption laws that deny the rights of the adopted person.
Published by Massey University Press
Available in all good bookstores now or buy online
“Perhaps initially conceived out of closed-adoption activism, Barbara Sumner’s Tree of Strangers is, through her sharp intellect and exquisitely cinematic writing, a book of far greater social and literary importance … As the daughter of an adopted person this book deeply affected me”
Caroline Bannon
“It packs a wallop”
John Campbell, TVNZ Breakfast
“And Sumner’s sense of imagery, her ability to find the pertinent metaphor, the sheer, low-level rage which colours this book, all make it hard to put down.”
Linda Burgess, Academy of New Zealand Literature
Watch, read & listen - Tree of Strangers in the media
Watch
Newshub Nation: Adoption Law Reform with Barbara Sumner and Annabel Ahuriri-Driscoll
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TVNZ Breakfast with John Campbell: The call for change in NZ's adoption laws
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Read
The myth of adoption as a social good (Newsroom, July 22, 2022)
An excerpt from Tree of Strangers
Gregor Thompson Reviews Tree of Strangers (Scoop Review of Books, December 11, 2020)
Mummy dearest - Bonnie Sumner interviews her mother Barbara Sumner about her search for her birth mother - and her adoptive mother's decision to cancel her own family (Newsroom, Oct 13, 2020)
Interview on RNZ’s Saturday Morning Programme with Kim Hill (RNZ, 12 Sept 2020)
Barbara Sumner: 'I have yet to meet a woman who gladly gave away her baby' (Stuff, 12 Sept 2020)
Tree of Strangers book: Barbara Sumner's search for mother ends in tragedy (NZ Herald, 12 Sep 2020)
Tree of Strangers: a Q&A with author Barbara Sumner (Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, 14 Sept 2020)
You Natheing In The Life (David Slack, 25 Sept 2020)
Listen
