JULIA BREWER DAILY
Categories: Women’s Fiction / Vintage Fiction / Adoption / 1960s
Publisher: Admission Press Inc.
Pub Date: August 3, 2021
But such a life-altering event can never be forgotten, and no secret remains buried forever. Twenty-five years later, the women are reunited by a blackmailer, who threatens to expose their secrets and destroy the lives they’ve built. That shattering revelation would shake their very foundations—and reverberate all the way to the White House.
Told from the three women’s perspectives in alternating chapters, this mesmerizing story is based on actual experiences of women in the 1960s who found themselves pregnant but unmarried, pressured by family and society to make horrific decisions. How that inconceivable act changed women forever is the story of No Names to Be Given, a heartbreaking but uplifting novel of family and redemption.
PRAISE FOR NO NAMES TO BE GIVEN:
A gorgeous, thrilling, and important novel! These strong women will capture your heart. —Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas.
An insightful and sympathetic view offered into the lives of those who were adopted and those who adopted them. —Pam Johnson, author of Justice for Ella.
A novel worthy of a Lifetime movie adaptation. —Jess Hagemann, author of Headcheese.
Readers can expect deep knowledge of the world the characters inhabit. —Sara Kocek, author of Promise Me Something.
This book is a relevant read and one that will keep readers guessing page after page until the very end. —The US Review of Books
Today’s young women, especially, need to absorb No Names to Be Given. —Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer
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In school, we learned about the social issues that took place during the 1960s. Daily has clearly done her research to portray a time period where women don’t have control over what happens to their own bodies and African Americans are still discriminated against. Sadly, 60 years later, we are still at war with these social injustices. I don’t know if that sad fact is part of the reason that Daily wrote this novel, but the message of caution, the call to action, and the hope for change are very timely and needed in our country today.
As someone who has grown up in the South, in a traditional Filipino family, and raised as a strict Baptist, I could relate to the shame of not fulfilling certain expectations and the pressure to live a certain life. As I take my own destiny in my hands, it has been truly inspiring to hear how these three girls rose above their circumstances and forged lives that no one else could have predicted they would be capable of creating. You might scoff and say that this is a work of fiction, so how can I be inspired? This book is loosely based on true stories that Daily found during her research. And in my experience, even the most fantastical tale can be found in the real world if you dig deep enough.
I think that many readers will enjoy this well-crafted story, but I think it will especially speak to those who are adopted, who plan to adopt, or are debating whether to put a child up for adoption. And if you don’t fall in any of those categories, I think you will find value in the story of perseverance, friendship, and self-love.
Julia Brewer Daily is a Texan with a southern accent. She holds a B.S. in English and a M.S. degree in Education from the University of Southern Mississippi. She has been a Communications Adjunct Professor at Belhaven University, Jackson, Mississippi, and Public Relations Director of the Mississippi Department of Education and Millsaps College, a liberal arts college in Jackson, MS. She was the founding director of the Greater Belhaven Market, a producers’ only market in a historic neighborhood in Jackson, and even shadowed Martha Stewart. As the Executive Director of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi (300 artisans from 19 states) which operates the Mississippi Craft Center, she wrote their stories to introduce them to the public. Daily is an adopted child from a maternity home hospital in New Orleans. She searched and found her birth mother and through a DNA test, her birth father’s family, as well. A lifelong southerner, she now resides on a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, with her husband Emmerson and Labrador retrievers, Memphis Belle and Texas Star.
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