Finding Isabella — Alfred J. Garrotto

Adoptee Analisa Marconi loses her family—for a second time—when her parents die in a private plane crash in which she is the only survivor. The trip was to celebrate her completion of grad school and the start of her new career. Devastated and alone in the world, now, and finally recovered from her own injuries, she sets out on a perilous journey of self-discovery to Santo Sangre, the Caribbean country of her birth to search for her birth mother and siblings. In a chance meeting, she meets and is immediately drawn to Arturo de Cordoba, a local music icon. But, these days, her island birth-country is a dangerous place for young women adoptees who innocently escaped lives of destitution through adoption. Thrust into this unwelcoming environment, Analisa is brutally kidnapped from her hotel room by domestic terrorists calling themselves Los Dejados (“those left behind”). Their insane cause is to recapture Santo Sangre-born female adoptees, get them pregnant—again and again—and thereby make up for the perceived losses to their nation. When Analisa pulls off a daring escape from her captors, Arturo volunteers to accompany her to the interior of the island where she hopes to find those ruptured familial links to her past. At last she finds her birth mother and her child self, but again faces danger from Los Dejados. Love a great read packed with tender romance, life-threatening danger, and heart-stopping suspense? Finding Isabella is waiting for you.