Plain Roots

A heartwarming story of family, forgiveness, and finding a place to belong. Taryn Clark thought she’d outgrown the need to find her birth mother. She thought that a successful career and a comfortable life in the city were enough to be happy. Did she really need to know about the woman who had given her away? Adopted at birth, her first few years were happy. It hadn’t mattered that she didn’t know her heritage; she had parents who loved her and wanted her. But divorce, and then death, ripped their tiny family apart, and at the tender age of six, she entered the foster care system. Over the next dozen years, she shuffled from home to home. Finding her roots seemed an impossible dream. But dreams are resilient. An unexpected discovery awakens old yearnings of belonging to a family, of being part of something bigger than herself. Finding the brief, ambiguous note from her birth mother is enough to unfurl the ribbons of hope still binding her heart. Her quest takes her to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and the heart of the Plain community. Aided by her unique eye color, a healthy dose of luck, and the private investigator she hires, Taryn finds her birth family easily enough, but finding the truth is another matter. In all her musings, she never imagined a scenario where her mother might be Amish. She never imagined that the fabric of her life might be a patchwork of faith and fear, stitched together with a dark family secret. Taryn is determined to trace her roots, even if it means digging in the mud to do so. Now she’s caught in the quicksand of a shocking discovery and the consequences of choices made, almost forty years ago. She’ll risk everything to uncover the truth and to claim the family—and the roots—she so desperately craves.