Finding Fernanda

Erin Siegal

Finding Fernanda

Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for Truth

Beacon Press
2012

An investigation of fraud, crime and corruption in international adoption between Guatemala and the United States. It follows a girl taken into an adoption ring as a child and the two mothers searching for her: one in Guatemala, one in the United States.

First published by Cathexis Press in November 2011; Beacon Press paperback, May 2012.

Honors

Robert Spiers Benjamin Award citation for best reporting in any medium on Latin America — Overseas Press Club of America
James Madison Award — Society of Professional Journalists
Gold IPPY Award — Independent Publisher Book Awards
International Latino Book Award

After publication

The book was the basis for an hour-long CBS investigative special that won a 2015 News Emmy.
The book was optioned by Lionsgate.
The New Yorker's Photo Booth ran "Finding Fernanda: Pictures from an Investigation".

Companion volume: The U.S. Embassy Cables: Adoption Fraud in Guatemala, 1987–2010, more than 700 pages of records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Forthcoming: Behind the Green Line, on the institutional culture of the U.S. Border Patrol from the 1970s to the present.