Raised from infancy as an only child, 18 year old Joan Mary Wheeler knows only that she was adopted. Still in high school, she is found by siblings she was never supposed to know. They tell her that she was the youngest of five children born to married parents, that their mother died when she was three months old, and that her name was Doris Michol Sippel. What happens next is the unfolding of family secrets and betrayal, joys of discovery, sadness of time lost, and the push and pull of two families on the one person they share. This is the story of a reunion and its aftermath that spans four decades. Through it all, one central question drives her: Why does discrimination against bastards, orphans, and the adopted still persist?