On today's episode we will talk with DAWN HOGAN about what is known as "The Baby Scoop Era." She was inspired to write her debut novel UNBROKEN BONDS when she was asked by a dear friend to search for the birth mother who gave her up for adoption, Dawn's research uncovered the rarely talked about homes for unwed mothers who shamefully coerced millions of young women to relinquish their babies to sealed adoptions.
She was fascinated and appalled by the degrading tactics perpetrated by the institutions that profited unscrupulously under the guise of benevolence. During this time in history, the basic rights of the unfortunate girls were not presented, and they were told to go on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Unable to shelve the nagging emotions which effected these women and their rehomed children, Dawn constructed a fictional account of the disturbingly true circumstances which make up one of this country’s disgraceful and hidden secrets.
Check out DWHogan.com for more information. You can follow her on Facebook D.W. Hogan author, on Instagram @dawnhoganauthor, Twitter @DawnDWHogan1 and https://www.goodreads.com/dawnhogan
A little about today's host-
Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 to consult and publish her first novel Beyond the Pear Blossoms. Her desire to connect and help others led to the launch of her podcast The Grit Show shortly thereafter. When she learned women host only 27% of podcasts, her skills and passion led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Network. She now helps mission-driven entrepreneurs better connect with their audiences by providing full-service podcast production and through a community for Entrepreneurs & Podcasters – EPAC. Podcasting is her primary focus, so she continues to support the writing community through this podcast, and her writing time is mostly focused on anthologies.
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[00:00:13] Shawna: Dawn Hogan, majored to English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She's the mother of four grown children and grandmother to two. She's a full-time author and lives in Huntsville with her husband. Unbroken Bonds is her debut novel. It's historical, fictional tale of four teen girls who become lifelong friends in a home for unwed mothers in 1956. As the years go by their vows, sisterhood remains strong as they rebuild their lives in the deep south. When tragedy strikes, they must decide whether to keep their past secrets or find out the fates of the children they were forced to give away. Kirkus review calls it an elegantly written and damning narrative.
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[00:00:53] Dawn: Hi, Shawna. Thank you for having me.
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[00:00:59] Dawn: Huntsville, Alabama. It is a rocket town. It is all about space and technology. It's the Silicon Valley of the South.
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[00:01:12] Shawna: That's wonderful. What is your favorite vacation that you've ever taken?
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[00:01:17] Shawna: Ooh, that's lovely. What was your favorite thing in Paris?
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[00:01:22] Shawna: Oh, when I went there, I didn't get to go to the Louvre. It was closed on Mondays and I had no idea, and I had one day in Paris and I missed the Louvre. The Eiffel Tower. There was plenty of beautiful things, but I missed the Louvre.
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[00:01:40] Shawna: You are a smart woman. This is the advice you all get to take home from today's podcast is to bring three pairs of sands at least for a week.
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[00:01:47] Dawn: Change 'em out.
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[00:01:54] Dawn: Oh, absolutely.
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[00:01:59] Dawn: Um, they would bring out the charcuterie boards with the cheese and meats and olive.
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[00:02:07] Dawn: With, with wine, of course.
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[00:02:15] Shawna: So do you think your book would be exactly the same if you had written it 10 years ago?
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[00:02:23] Shawna: What do you think changed about you and your writing in the 10 years between when you did write it and before that?
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[00:02:35] Shawna: Ooh, tell me more.
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[00:02:55] Dawn: Yeah. With what was happening with the Supreme court and everything, so Yeah.
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[00:03:05] Dawn: Yeah. So that we don't repeat the past. Mm-hmm. , we don't wanna have homes for unwed mothers where it's a shameful thing and they take their babies away.
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[00:03:14] Dawn: We do that again. Yes.
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[00:03:33] Shawna: now, we also don't have, that wasn't a great resource, but they had that place, and those supports aren't even there. Even though they weren't the best idea.
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[00:03:43] Shawna: You think so? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a big difference. So you'd started the book before that happened?
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[00:03:49] Dawn: well, my friend in 2006 brought me her, unsealed adoption papers from the state of Tennessee
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[00:03:57] Dawn: And asked me to find her birth mother. And I started doing the research on this, and I started finding out about these homes for unwed mothers
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[00:04:06] Dawn: and how they were run and the shame and the stigma.
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[00:04:39] Dawn: And the name of the home is fictitious and the aftermath of what they go through. I mean, these girls were told, you'll forget about this.
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[00:04:50] Dawn: Don't tell anybody, don't tell your future husband, don't tell your children. Go to your grave with this information. And there was no counseling. There was no nothing. But fortunately my girls had each other.
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[00:05:04] Dawn: In that friendship, they had to, strengthen themselves mm-hmm. and to, to keep them moving forward and having that bond of friendship. That it's like, no, you're gonna be okay. We're here.
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[00:05:20] Shawna: Because of the genetic test that can be taken now, there's some of that stuff cropping up where somebody's getting a phone call from their cousin. And their cousin's saying there's this person that thinks their related to us. Did your mom have a kid? And then she's like, no, there's no way.
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[00:05:49] Shawna: To be able to say like, I can't believe my mom. Cannot talk about that, but there's no way to understand what her mom went through and how she had to completely compartmentalize that experience. And how now that she's in her seventies, eighties, and no, we're not, we're not bringing this up, but like this has been
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[00:06:08] Dawn: Traumatic. Yes. So traumatic. And that's the point of this too, these women. Much older now. Yes. And if this story is not told, if their voices aren't heard now, yes. We don't wanna lose this history. Yes. We want them to have a voice. Yes.
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[00:06:36] Shawna: That knowledge and what they actually experience is going away. So it makes this book even more important. For people to actually see and to actually hear this. That's incredible. I think that's so valuable that you were able to write this and that you have this information to pass on and to give to others.
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[00:07:06] Shawna: Yes. And that's a conversation I had with one of the other authors that we interviewed for this was really talking about the importance of the personal stories.
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[00:07:29] Shawna: It's like connecting with that individual character and what experience they had that made me want to learn more about them and their culture and their life and those pieces and that empathy that you breed by doing that.
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[00:07:40] Shawna: So the importance of that.
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[00:07:51] Dawn: Mm-hmm. and what that was like. Yes. I mean, there were a lot of places in here that I'm writing and I'm crying.
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[00:07:59] Dawn: You know?
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[00:08:03] Dawn: Well, well, and the thing is, there's sections of this book I cannot read out loud. Mm-hmm. . Cause I won't make it through. Mm-hmm.
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[00:08:17] Shawna: Yes. And you wanted to connect on that level.
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[00:08:23] Shawna: You did good. Yeah. That's what's supposed to happen. Oh, I love that.
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[00:08:36] Dawn: Be honest.
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[00:08:41] Dawn: Be honest, because if you're not, you're doing a disservice to your readers
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[00:08:51] Shawna: Be bold. Not easy, but very, very important. Was that hard for you? Was that hard for that?
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[00:09:09] Shawna: Mm-hmm.
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[00:09:20] Shawna: That's wonderful. You just have to get to that place where you recognize it. If you're being true to what you're writing, it's gonna offend somebody.
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[00:09:33] Dawn: And if they're offended, put it down and go read something else.
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[00:09:42] Dawn: But I, I have much more people that are not offended.
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[00:09:58] Shawna: And that's kind of like the, the offense, the nerve is all, like, they're all close together.
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[00:10:14] Dawn: I didn't construe it
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[00:10:17] Dawn: To make any form of religion look bad or anything like that. I told what was true and if they're offended by the truth, I can't help that.
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[00:10:32] Dawn: 1.5 million girls can tell you
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[00:10:37] Dawn: went to these homes.
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[00:10:41] Dawn: Between, between 1950 and 1980.
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[00:10:44] Dawn: So there's a bunch of people out there that can tell you what happened.
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[00:10:51] Dawn: Well, when you add in black market adoptions
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[00:10:56] Dawn: and gray market adoptions, that number is really between four and six million during that timeframe.
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[00:11:04] Dawn: And you know, black market babies are, you know, just what they sound like. I had one birth mother tell me that she exchanged her baby in a truck stop. Wow. And then the gray market babies would be like a priest or minister. The family's gone to them and they're like, go to grandma's house when the baby is born. We have a family that will be happy to adopt this child.
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[00:11:32] Dawn: And then nobody's to ever know.
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[00:11:42] Shawna: Yes. What is the best way for people to find you, Dawn?
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[00:11:58] Shawna: get all the link, click on all those. Yeah. Wonderful. And we'll have all the show notes too for you guys to be able to find her.
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[00:12:08] Dawn: I would have to say early on it was Gone With the Wind.
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[00:12:13] Dawn: Because I read it and I loved it.
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[00:12:15] Dawn: And then I found out that Margaret Mitchell was a housewife, ah, who wrote the story. And back then I was a housewife with two young children. And I'm like, if a housewife could do a housewife, could I, I could do this.
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[00:12:33] Dawn: So that I love that always has stayed in my mind of don't think because you don't have a PhD or something. Yes. That you can't sit down and write a book. You can.
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[00:12:48] Dawn: Exactly.
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[00:12:49] Dawn: And Housewives have a lot of experience, so .
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[00:12:58] Shawna: Thanks for joining us. We hope you take a second to give us stars, or a review on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at Author Express Podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.
