Reflection of Nolan’s ‘Until I Find You’ in The New York Book Review
A recent review titled Torn Asunder, written by Oscar Lopez for The New York Book Review, spotlights Professor Rachel Nolan, Assistant Professor of International History, and her groundbreaking book Until I Find You, a Pulitzer Prize finalist that uncovers the little‑known story of how Guatemala became the site of one of the world’s most coercive and unregulated international adoption systems.
The review frames Nolan’s work as a vital intervention in understanding the long‑term consequences of U.S. involvement in Central America. As Guatemala’s civil war unfolded, fueled in part by “large-scale atrocities, genocidal mass murder, and scorched-earth massacres” committed by U.S.-backed military forces, tens of thousands of children were separated from their families. Against this backdrop, Nolan documents how Guatemala developed “the only country in the world to allow lawyers to match children to families and complete adoptions without judicial oversight.”
Her research shows how economic incentives, legal loopholes, and weak regulation gave rise to a profitable adoption pipeline. Lawyers, intermediaries, and recruiters known as “jaladoras” often obtained children by coercing or deceiving impoverished mothers, or, in some cases, through outright kidnapping. As the review notes, “adoptions became an unrecognized, though much smaller, parallel migration of Guatemalans to the United States.”
The United States played a crucial enabling role, issuing adoption visas despite documented fraud. Nolan cites embassy cables from the late 1980s acknowledging that visas had been granted “to possibly stolen children based on falsified official Guatemalan documents.” Even after DNA tests became mandatory in 1998, the adoption system continued to operate with minimal oversight, driven by pressure from would‑be adoptive parents for faster processing. As the review highlights, the industry’s efficiency was often prioritized above ethics: “One constant refrain…was: could he please speed up the process?”
By the time Guatemala halted international adoptions in 2008, nearly 30,000 Guatemalan children had been adopted by U.S. families. Nolan’s work chronicles not only the historical forces that made such practices possible, but also today’s efforts to seek justice, reconnect families, and confront the deep trauma caused by decades of coercive separation.
Juxtaposed with Nolan’s archival and investigative approach, the review also discusses Elizabeth Barnert’s Reunion, which examines similar patterns of family separation in El Salvador. Together, the books underscore how war, U.S. foreign policy, and private adoption networks reshaped the lives of thousands across the region.
Nolan’s Until I Find You stands out for its clarity, rigor, and its ability to illuminate a complex history that remains largely unknown to the American public. The review concludes that as Guatemala and adoptees begin reckoning with the past, “uncomfortable truths will no doubt continue to surface.”
The full review can be read here with a subscription.
Professor Rachel Nolan is an Assistant Professor of International History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. A historian of modern Latin America, her work focuses on migration, political violence, the Central American armed internal conflicts, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Her scholarly pursuits have been supported by Russell Sage Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Council. Additionally, she is an active contributor to media outlets including The New Yorker, New York Times, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, and El Faro and serves as a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.