Already Home: Confronting the Trauma of Adoption

Third Place, The BookFest Book Awards, April 2024

Honorable Mention, Great Southwest Book Festival, March 2024

Honorable Mention, Southern California Book Festival, December 2023

Runner-Up, Indies Today, December 2023

"While there are many adoption memoirs available on the market, the author's writing skills and emotional honesty make Already Home stand out...The author is a skilled story teller..."
BOOKLIFE PRIZE, 2024

"This memoir...reads like a Netflix drama but has the authenticity and gravitas of a well-made documentary."
FIVE STAR REVIEW, TAMMY RUGGLES FOR READER VIEWS

"Ibach writes with candor and curiosity, making readers feel as though they're witnessing the author's self-exploration in real time...An earnest and thoughtful adoption memoir."
KIRKUS REVIEWS

"...an honest, in-depth, and propulsive memoir as gripping as a novel."
STARRED REVIEW,
BLUEINK REVIEW

"Readers looking to cry happy tears will find solace in this emotionally charged memoir."
BOOKLIFE REVIEWS

"...a profound and engaging work..."
LITERARY TITAN, February 2024

In his debut memoir, Already Home, adopted son, Howard Frederick Ibach, invites readers on an inspiring journey that ultimately debunks the widespread notion that adoption is an automatic ticket to suffering and abandonment.

As the son of a physician father and a scientist mother, Howard rarely questions his status as adoptee in a family that includes both an adoptive sister and his parents’ biological children. That’s because growing up in early 1960s-Wisconsin, he was afforded a life of love, security, and boyhood adventures.

But in 2015 at the age of fifty-eight, his story takes an unexpected turn. Amid the turmoil of a faltering relationship, he stumbles upon research that concludes most, if not all, adoptees will experience trauma.

Two years later, Ibach decides to trace his biological lineage. Armed with his adoption records, he learns the identity of his birth mother and unravels the captivating and dramatic narrative of his biological family.

Howard's discovery reveals not just the joy of his newfound connections, but also reaffirms the love he has for the family who adopted him.

Already Home is an inspiring memoir that disputes presumptive ideas about adoption and reveals what it really means to have a family…or two.