When he was ten years old, Paul Fronczak was snooping around for Christmas presents in a crawl space in his family’s Chicago home. There, he found hundreds of old newspaper clippings about the kidnapping of a one-day-old infant in a hospital in 1964. He also learned that, two years later, the boy was found and returned to his family—and that the boy was him. Nearly fifty years later, Paul, acting on long-held suspicions, took a DNA test that proved he was not the kidnapped boy. In an instant, he found himself at the center of two half-century-old mysteries—who was he, and where was the real Paul? True Identity is about three separate major investigations—the hunt for the real Paul Fronczak; the search for the author’s missing twin sister Jill; and finally, the investigation into his true identity, his heart and soul and the demons inside him—inherited and created—that still need to be confronted.
This is the inspiring and “page-turning” (Booklist) true story of a man who discovered that he had been kidnapped as a baby—and how his quest to find out who he really is upturned the genealogy industry, his own family, and set in motion the second longest cold case in US history. In 1964, a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital. Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again—but Paul was always unsure about his true identity. Then, four years ago—spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith—Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed that he was definitely not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why. Poignant and inspiring, The Foundling is a story about a child lost and a faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.
The fascinating history of how the antifascist movement of the 1930s created “the left” as we know it today In the middle years of the Great Depression, the antifascist movement became a global political force, powerfully uniting people from across divisions of ideology, geography, race, language, and nationality. Joseph Fronczak shows how socialists, liberals, communists, anarchists, and others achieved a semblance of unity in the fight against fascism. Depression-era antifascists were populist, militant, and internationalist. They understood fascism in global terms, and they were determined to fight it on local terms. In the United States, antifascists fought against fascism on the streets of cities such as Chicago and New York, and they connected their own fights to the ones raging in Germany, Italy, and Spain. As he traces the global trajectory of the antifascist movement, Fronczak argues that its most significant legacy is its creation of “the left” as we know it today: an international conglomeration of people committed to a shared politics of solidarity.
The fascinating history of how the antifascist movement of the 1930s created "the left" as we know it today In the middle years of the Great Depression, the antifascist movement became a global political force, powerfully uniting people from across divisions of ideology, geography, race, language, and nationality. Joseph Fronczak shows how socialists, liberals, communists, anarchists, and others achieved a semblance of unity in the fight against fascism. Depression-era antifascists were populist, militant, and internationalist. They understood fascism in global terms, and they were determined to fight it on local terms. In the United States, antifascists fought against fascism on the streets of cities such as Chicago and New York, and they connected their own fights to the ones raging in Germany, Italy, and Spain. As he traces the global trajectory of the antifascist movement, Fronczak argues that its most significant legacy is its creation of "the left" as we know it today: an international conglomeration of people committed to a shared politics of solidarity.
This is the inspiring and “page-turning” (Booklist) true story of a man who discovered that he had been kidnapped as a baby—and how his quest to find out who he really is upturned the genealogy industry, his own family, and set in motion the second longest cold case in US history. In 1964, a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital. Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again—but Paul was always unsure about his true identity. Then, four years ago—spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith—Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed that he was definitely not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why. Poignant and inspiring, The Foundling is a story about a child lost and a faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.
When he was ten years old, Paul Fronczak was snooping around for Christmas presents in a crawl space in his family’s Chicago home. There, he found hundreds of old newspaper clippings about the kidnapping of a one-day-old infant in a hospital in 1964. He also learned that, two years later, the boy was found and returned to his family—and that the boy was him. Nearly fifty years later, Paul, acting on long-held suspicions, took a DNA test that proved he was not the kidnapped boy. In an instant, he found himself at the center of two half-century-old mysteries—who was he, and where was the real Paul? True Identity is about three separate major investigations—the hunt for the real Paul Fronczak; the search for the author’s missing twin sister Jill; and finally, the investigation into his true identity, his heart and soul and the demons inside him—inherited and created—that still need to be confronted.
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