Mary Cardaras wrote Ripped from the Root (2021) after listening to the story of Dena Polites Poulias who had been adopted from Greece by an American couple in the 1950s. Just as Mary had been.


Mary had given up her 10 year search for her biological Greek mother by then, but, inspired by the shared experienced with Dena, began talking with the journalist Gabrielle Glaser who had written American Baby, and with the scholar Gonda Van Steen, who had been exploring the context of Greek adoptions since 2013.


In Ripped from the Root, Mary recounts how Dena went back to the village where she was born many years later. How the adoption - and reclamation - affected others such as extended family is covered, and has relevance for other transnational adoptees.