The Girl Behind the Door: A Father's Quest to Understand His Daughter's Suicide - Hardcover

A moving and riveting memoir about one family's love and tragedy. It contains extremely important information about the disordered sense of attachment that children of orphanages and institutionalization can experience. And it is beautifully researched, and expressed. I love this girl Casey, and her brave parents, and am very grateful that Mr. Brooks has written this book.--Anne Lamott

Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly.--John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa County Crisis Center, and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge

A must-read for anyone who has adopted or plans to adopt.--Nancy Newton Verrier, author of The Primal Wound and Coming Home to Self

John s tragic story holds this lesson for all of us. His willingness to share Casey s story will save lives.--Jane Ballback, Publisher and Executive Editor, Adoption Voices Magazine"

This is the story of a family like many. Years ago they came together with love and hopefulness. They were determined and uncertain, courageous and afraid and ultimately, innocent and guilty. Do not think that because this is a book about an adoptive family that you will not recognize yourself. Do not think that because it is about a child s suicide that you can have the luxury of turning away Read this book. --Anne Brodzinsky, Ph.D. author of The Mulberry Bird"

"So skillfully and poignantly told...this book is for parents, definitely as well as for professionals, hotline volunteers and, with its final chapter of warnings, for prospective adoptive parents. With its anguished suspense-like telling and lessons learnable, THE GIRL BEHIND THE DOOR is a book to get wrapped up in."--Terri Schlichenmeyer

John's tragic story holds this lesson for all of us. His willingness to share Casey's story will save lives.--Jane Ballback, Publisher and Executive Editor, Adoption Voices Magazine

"This is the story of a family like many. Years ago they came together with love and hopefulness. They were determined and uncertain, courageous and afraid and ultimately, innocent and guilty. Do not think that because this is a book about an adoptive family that you will not recognize yourself. Do not think that because it is about a child's suicide that you can have the luxury of turning away...Read this book."--Anne Brodzinsky, Ph.D. author of The Mulberry Bird

An award-winning, candid, and compelling story of an adoptive father s search for the truth about his teenage daughter s suicide: Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly (John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa Crisis Center, and author of "The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge"). Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter s room to make sure she was getting up for school and found her room dark and neater than usual. Casey was gone but he found a note: "The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I m sorry." Several hours later a security video was found that showed Casey stepping off the bridge. Brooks spent months after Casey s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for the first fourteen months of her life, to her adoption and life with John and his wife Erika in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers. In "The Girl Behind the Door," Brooks shares what he learned and asks What did everyone miss? What could have been done differently? He d come to realize that Casey might have been helped if someone had recognized that she d likely suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy an affliction common among children who ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. This emotional deprivation in early childhood, from the lack of a secure attachment to a primary caregiver, can lead to a wide range of serious behavioral issues later in life. John s hope is that Casey s story, and what he discovered since her death, will help others. This important book is a wakeup call that parents, mental health professionals, and teens should read."