So what do you call a girl who was a Jehovah’s Witness, then Catholic, then Jewish, then an Evangelical Christian and who-knows-how many-other-religions, all before she turned seven years- old?
A foster kid.
What do you call the same girl who found herself adopted into a hardcore, abusive Mormon family?
A girl banking on the whole “Eternal Families Are Forever” business not being true.

Heather Young’s memoir “Ezra and Hadassah: A Portrait of American Royalty” is the true story of Heather and her brother being born to a mother with paranoid schizophrenia and a developmentally delayed father who couldn’t take care of them. Heather and her brother were put into foster care but still had regular contact with their biological parents.

At ages 9 and 7 years old, the kids were adopted out without their parents knowledge. They were dropped off at their adoptive family’s home, to people they had never met before. Thus began a decade-long game of survivor, trying to figure out how to please their new LDS parents and their twisted version of God, while still staying sane.

Through the roller coaster of life, Heather and her brother were separated from each other,then reunited, only to be pulled apart again by forces beyond their control. All the while, Heather wondered about their biological parents and whatever became of them.

She found out when fate brought them back together again, this time for good. Along with their presence came the whole truth, warts and all.

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