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Life is filled with events that change people's courses forever. For many, it's a career path, marriage or death of a loved one.
For international adoptees, that major life event often happens much earlier than for most.
"The Orphan Keeper" by Camron Wright is a fictionalized account of a true story about Chellamuthu, a 7-year-old boy who was kidnapped in his native India, taken to a Christian orphanage hours away from his home and eventually adopted by an unsuspecting Utah family. They raised him as their son, changing his name to Taj Rowland.
His adoptive family was horrified to later learn that he had a family back in India whom he missed. As time went on, Rowland continued to live his life and served a church mission in London, where his immersion among a large Indian populace triggered memories he thought were long forgotten.
Eventually, he met a woman named Priya — whom he would ultimately marry — who was from Southern India and had some unexpected ties to the orphanage Rowland was originally taken to.
When Wright heard of the story from a mutual friend, "my jaw dropped. I knew I needed to meet this guy."
Few people knew of Rowland's history, and he was nervous to share his story, but he opened up to Wright.
Eventually, Wright went to India twice to taste the food, smell the curries and spices, and walk the street where Rowland was kidnapped.
"To see the people and hear the language, it helped in strengthening all of the descriptions," Wright said. "It helped me paint a picture of where the story was taking place."
He worked to stay as true to Rowland's story as possible, but the story is still a work of fiction — Rowland had several missing memories, and the owner of the orphanage had died.
Getting a clear picture of the horrific situation of a child being kidnapped and adopted into a family in another country is a challenging situation.
In 2007, a federal indictment accused Utah adoption agency Focus on Children of coercing and tricking parents in Samoa into giving up their children for adoption. Some involved in the situation were given prison time; others faced misdemeanors, probation and fines.
But few agencies that have engaged in illegal practices have been prosecuted, and many critics say that the unethical adoption agencies ignore how children have arrived at an orphanage.
Cases such as the Focus on Children one, as well as improved fertility treatments and other factors, have led to a steady decline in international adoption. In Utah, 2,551 children were adopted between 1999 and 2015, but those numbers have been dwindling. In 2007, 221 children were adopted; by 2015, only 63 international adoptions occurred in Utah, according to U.S. Department of State. The number of international adoption agencies subsequently has declined.
"Children still need families, and adoptions need to be done with integrity and transparency. I've long said we are in a perfect storm of adoption policy and practice. There could be some significant opportunities for genuine change," adoptive parent Maureen McCauley Evans said on her adoption blog lightofdaystories.com. "Here's hoping the voices of adult adoptees and of international first parents are at the forefront."
Giving Rowland a voice is one of the goals Wright had for his book.
"It's certainly a challenge to put words and the sentences together so that it means what you see in your head and evokes the emotion you want," he said. "I wanted to get the story right, get the emotion right, so that I could create a story Taj was happy with."
Rowland stayed out of the writing process, which took about a year, and Wright recalls dropping off the manuscript on a Wednesday about 5 p.m. He assumed Rowland would need a few days to go over it, but he got a call the next morning. Rowland had stayed up all night reading it.
"He told me, 'You nailed it, and I loved it,' and that was satisfying," Wright said.
While the book follows the journey of a single adoptee in a particular situation, Wright said his book balances the unique and the universal.
"Taj's story is captivating and specific to him, but we can all relate to questions of, 'Who are we? Where do we fit in?' " he said.
Wright has received a lot of praise from people who have read the book, and he has been surprised by the number of people who have been touched by international adoption in some way.
He also wrote the book as a piece of narrative, and not as an indictment of international adoption or agencies. Rowland has no recollection of whether other children at the orphanage were kidnapped, and he said he was treated well while he was there.
"This isn't an exposé on people being kidnapped from India. Taj doesn't have a negative view of the orphanage or the owner. This story tells of his journey; the intent is not to point out the horrific," Wright said. "This story is almost like validation, and it's been therapeutic for Taj. He can show someone how he feels, and that he really did go through this."
It's a story of a trajectory life event that sent one man on a journey he never expected to embark upon, told with the conflicting emotions of a man who loves the family who raised him while he yearns to find the family he remembers. —
Camron Wright
Shadow Mountain
Pages • 432
Cost • $24.99