 In the
spring of 2004, just as Paula Bernstein,
a married 35-year-old mother of one, shlepped
her daughter and diaper bag into their
Brooklyn apartment, the phone rang. The
caller ID read “Louise Wise Services,” the
Manhattan adoption agency through which
her parents adopted her. Within minutes,
she learns something that will change her
life forever: She has an identical twin
sister, Elyse Schein. Soon afterward, they
meet and start the giddy, yet awkward,
process of getting to know each other after
decades of living amazingly parallel lives.
Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins
Separated and Reunited (Random House) is
a suspenseful and often painfully honest
account of how the women piece together
their histories and come to terms with
the staggering fact that they—along
with other children adopted through the
same agency—were separated for nothing
more than a psychological study of twins.
Both a detective story—the sisters
set out on a dogged search for information
about the study and their birthmother—and
a touching account of twins reunited, the
book delves into the very meaning of identity
as Schein and Bernstein consider what they
might have been like had they been raised
together, or had each of them—genetic
equals—been adopted into the other’s
family.
Identical Strangers is not an indictment
of adoption—in fact, both women appear
to have close relationships with their
adoptive families and neither appears to
be wracked by her fate. Writes Schein, “I
embrace both lives: the life I lead and
the one that might have been.”
Reviewed by Renée Olson, mother
of Daniel, eight.
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