The Invitation: A Memoir of Family Love and Reconciliation

Pauline Carey is the author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

This true story, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Governor General’s
Award, is told as a piece of fiction—a tale about adoption that says a
lot about family.

Kathleen is an artist who, in the 1960s, gave away her second child,
Sean, to a childless couple from Paris whom she barely knew. The
adoptive parents keep in touch with her over the years, and when Sean
turns 18, Kathleen invites herself to his birthday fкte, held in a
French castle. Eventually Sean visits his extended family in Vancouver
and slips easily into a camaraderie with his half-brother Luke. With
care and patience, blood relations who have grown up in different
countries try to understand each other, and birth-mother and son begin
to talk.

The tale reads like a mystery with heart. Life is not easy for any of
the people in the story, but they are gifted with common sense and
tolerance. Haggerty has written a touching and wise memoir of her own
experience.