One Who Has Been Here Before by Becca Babcock
This is described as gothic fiction, but it didn't have that vibe for me.
The main character, Emma Gaugin Weaver, was adopted as a child. She, her siblings, and cousins were seized by CPS after the family farm was raided. The adults were all charged with crimes, ranging from child neglect to possession of stolen property. The authorities found the conditions unsuitable for the children and they ended up in foster care or adoption. Emma has only vague memories of the family farm in rural Nova Scotia, with clearer ones of her older sister Heather, who was briefly in the same foster home as her. Emma was eventually adopted by her foster parents, the Weavers, and the family moved to Edmonton.
Emma is a woman without strong motivations. She has a history of anxiety, and a love of history, that has led her into working on her Master's degree. Her advisors encouraged her to delve into the relatively new area of auto-ethnography, where she researches her own family and her feelings around that.
As the book opens, Emma has travelled back to Nova Scotia and has found the area when the farm the Gaugin family lived on was located. As she visits the local archives, and talks to people who knew the story of her family, she doesn't reveal her own origins at first, but finds herself drawn into meeting her own family members, dealing with anxiety attacks around the situations she finds herself in, and entering a new relationship.
An interesting read, with a sympathetic character who undergoes growth in her understanding of herself.
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