Books and Writings — Spotlight Oral History

My Books

Booth Girls: Pregnancy, Adoption, and the Secrets We Kept

2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist (General Nonfiction)

In 1961, my mother delivered her first daughter, my half-sister, at the Salvation Army Booth Memorial Hospital in St. Paul. Booth was a home for “unwed mothers” and so, like most of the other young women in residence, my mother surrendered her baby for adoption. She kept the whole experience a secret until 1994, when my sister found my mother. After my mother died in 2009, I set out to learn more about her experiences as Booth girl in hopes of understanding my own as an adoptive mother. Based on oral history interviews, archival research, family history, and memoir, Booth Girls is a story about mothering through the losses and gains of adoption.

Booth Girls has been named a finalist for a 2022 Minnesota Book Award! It is available online from the MNHS Press and at independent bookstores in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, including Subtext Books, Magers & Quinn, Next Chapter Booksellers, and Storied Owl. Want to support an independent bookstore in your area? Try IndieBound or Bookshop. It is also available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.

Buy

Praise for Booth Girls:

“In this powerful, beautifully written book, Kim Heikkila recounts the dramatic and painful story of her mother’s first child, born when she was a young unmarried woman in the early 1960s. Weaving together her personal family story with her scholarly knowledge and insight, Heikkila uncovers the emotional and social toll experienced by unmarried mothers who bore not only the babies but the weight of stigma as the fathers walked away.”

— Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation

“Kim Heikkila combines powerful and evocative memoir with deep historical research to explore the changing experiences of unwed pregnancy and adoption.”

— Sara Evans, author of Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End

“In so skillfully pinpointing the personal within its historical context, Heikkila delivers a must-read for all those touched by adoption––and for anyone seeking to better understand a loved one gone too soon.”

— Kate St. Vincent Vogl, author of Lost & Found: A Memoir of Mothers

Watch this video for a glimpse of the story at the heart of Booth Girls.

Sisterhood of War: Minnesota Women in Vietnam

2012 Minnesota Book Award Finalist

More than 250,000 women served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Approximately 7,500 of them went to Vietnam, 6,000 of them as nurses. I interviewed fifteen of nurses from Minnesota. Sisterhood of War tells the story of women who spent a year caring for the casualties of war, came home to a divided country, and descended into a silent struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In order to heal themselves, they bonded together as sister veterans, sharing their stories with each other in a PTSD support group and with the nation in the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.

Sisterhood of War was a finalist for a 2012 Minnesota Book Award and nominee for the Hognander Minnesota History Award. Order the book from MNHS Press, Subtext Books, Next Chapter Booksellers, Magers & Quinn, IndieBound, or Bookshop. It is also available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers. Visit the Sisterhood of War website to learn more.