Oceans Apart: A Voyage of International Adoption

As a seven-year-old girl in Vietnam, Mary suffered an almost fatal bout of small pox - an uncanny twist of fate that changed her life forever. Entrusted to an American couple by her young mother, who was desperate to pull her daughter from death's door, Mary bid her mother a traumatic farewell at Saigon's Tan Son Nhat International Airport and was taken to the United States. There, she experienced and abusive childhood filled with neglect as well as physical and emotional turmoil. Shortly after arriving in the US, Mary overheard a conversation in which her adoptive father, Sam Mustard, learned that her mother was the victim of a bombing raid in Saigon during the Vietnam War. However, this was not true, and after almost three decades of tears and lost hope, the Red Cross successfully reunited mother and daughter-and did so without the aid of any legal documents concerning their whereabouts. This story is an empowering testament to the courage, tenacity and determination of two hemomenal women: a mother who sacrificed parental love to give her daughter a better life and a daughter who desperately sought to recapture her lost identity.