Deborah Jiang-Stein: Hello. This is Deborah Jiang-Stein, and I am the author of Prison Baby. I'm going to tell you a bit about how I came to write this book, and then I'll share an excerpt with you.

I wrote Prison Baby because several editors had asked me to write the story about my birth in prison and the challenges that followed. I knew I had an unusual and hope-filled life story to tell, but it took me years to write Prison Baby, because I had to piece together memories and my own emotional truth.

Now, I will read an excerpt.

I nudged the top dresser drawer closed, but a corner of white catches my eye. A crisp piece of paper peeks out from under the plastic drawer liner, printed with miniature roses.

I peel up a corner of the liner.

Lodged under silky slips, under all the softness and the scent of perfume, stashed like a rumpled stowaway in the first-class cabin, I unveil a copy of a typed letter, just a paragraph long.

My neck throbs -- boom da boom -- my pulse in a loud pump of anticipation all the way into my shoulder muscles. My clenched shoulder blades draw in my neck so much it aches.

Must be important if it's hidden. I already know I'm adopted, so the letter can't be about that. Maybe it's about my race, or races. No one's explained to me why I'm caramel-colored in a white family.

In the letter, my mother writes to the family attorney, "Can you please alter Deborah's birth certificate from the Federal Prison in West Virginia, to Seattle? Nothing good will come from her knowing she lived in the prison before foster care, or that her birth mother was a heroin addict. After all, she was born in our hearts here in Seattle, and if she finds out all of this, she'll ask questions about the prison and her foster homes before we adopted her."

"Impossible," I think. "Read it again," I tell myself. Everything blurs.

Foster care? I had no idea about my life before my adoption or even how old I was at the time or where I lived before then.

I read the letter over and over, these new truths forever imprinted into my memory.