Tree of Strangers
“It packs a wallop” - John Campbell, TVNZ
“…hard to put down” - Linda Burgess, ANZL
“…a book of ... social and literary importance.” - Caroline Barron, Kete
What does it mean to grow up adopted in New Zealand? How do you make a life when there is no history to build from?
Remarkable, moving, beautifully written, Tree of Strangers is a gripping account of a search for identity in a country governed by adoption laws that deny the rights of the adopted person.
Published by Massey University Press
Now available direct from the author
“Perhaps initially conceived out of closed-adoption activism, Barbara Sumner’s Tree of Strangers is, through her sharp intellect and exquisitely cinematic writing, a book of far greater social and literary importance … As the daughter of an adopted person this book deeply affected me”
Caroline Bannon
“It packs a wallop”
John Campbell, TVNZ Breakfast
“And Sumner’s sense of imagery, her ability to find the pertinent metaphor, the sheer, low-level rage which colours this book, all make it hard to put down.”
Linda Burgess, Academy of New Zealand Literature
Watch, read & listen - Tree of Strangers in the media
Watch
Newshub Nation: Adoption Law Reform with Barbara Sumner and Annabel Ahuriri-Driscoll
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TVNZ Breakfast with John Campbell: The call for change in NZ's adoption laws
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Read
The myth of adoption as a social good (Newsroom, July 22, 2022)
An excerpt from Tree of Strangers
Gregor Thompson Reviews Tree of Strangers (Scoop Review of Books, December 11, 2020)
Mummy dearest - Bonnie Sumner interviews her mother Barbara Sumner about her search for her birth mother - and her adoptive mother's decision to cancel her own family (Newsroom, Oct 13, 2020)
Interview on RNZ’s Saturday Morning Programme with Kim Hill (RNZ, 12 Sept 2020)
Barbara Sumner: 'I have yet to meet a woman who gladly gave away her baby' (Stuff, 12 Sept 2020)
Tree of Strangers book: Barbara Sumner's search for mother ends in tragedy (NZ Herald, 12 Sep 2020)
Tree of Strangers: a Q&A with author Barbara Sumner (Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, 14 Sept 2020)
You Natheing In The Life (David Slack, 25 Sept 2020)
