The Foundling
The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me
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Narrated by:
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Kirby Heyborne
About this listen
The Foundling tells the incredible and inspiring true story of Paul Fronczak, a man who recently discovered via a DNA test that he was not who he thought he was - and set out to solve two 50-year-old mysteries at once. Along the way he upturned the genealogy industry, unearthed his family's deepest secrets, and broke open the second longest cold case in US history, all in a desperate bid to find out who he really is.
In 1964 a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital.
Two years later police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant's mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next 50 years believing they were whole again - but Paul was always unsure about his true identity.
Then, four years ago - spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith - Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed definitively that he was not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he's been living - and to discover who abandoned him and why.
This is the story of Paul's heart-wrenching and tortuous journey to solve both mysteries and finally learn the truth about his identity.
The Foundling is a touching and inspiring story about a child lost and faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.
©2017 Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By connie on 12-29-12
By: Lee Harris
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The Girls Who Went Away
- The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade
- By: Ann Fessler
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade.
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Sad but True ... and Helpful
- By Kim Kavanagh on 01-05-17
By: Ann Fessler
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The Man I Never Met
- A Memoir
- By: Adam Schefter
- Narrated by: Adam Schefter
- Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 11, 2001, Joe Maio went to work in the north tower of the World Trade Center. He never returned, leaving behind a wife, Sharri, and 15-month old son, Devon. Five years later, Sharri remarried, and Devon welcomed a new dad into his life. For thousands, the whole country really, 9/11 is a day of grief. For Adam and Sharri Maio Schefter and their family it’s not just a day of grief, but also hope. This is a story of 9/11, but it’s also the story of 9/12 and all the days after. Life moved on. Pieces were picked up. New dreams were dreamed. The Schefters are the embodiment of that.
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Remembering a fallen father thru a family
- By Bob H on 09-07-18
By: Adam Schefter
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Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
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I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
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Identical Strangers
- A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited
- By: Elyse Schein, Paula Bernstein
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo, Effie Johnson
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the astonishing true story of Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein, who shared a personal history for more than three decades - and didn't know it. In her mid-30s, Schein finally decided to call an adoption agency to learn about her biological mother. Not expecting much, she instead got the surprise of her life. Her identical twin sister, Bernstein, lived just minutes away.
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What if you are a twin and don't know it?
- By Joanne on 07-15-08
By: Elyse Schein, and others
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Modern Loss
- Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
- By: Rebecca Soffer, Gabrielle Birkner
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
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Not What I Was Expecting
- By Bessie Mae on 03-01-23
By: Rebecca Soffer, and others
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After I'm Gone
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Linda Emond
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Dead is dead. Missing is gone. When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk at a Valentine's Day dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative - if not all legal - businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July in 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, facing prison, vanishes. Though Bambi has no idea where her husband - or his money - might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie.
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Cannot rate this highly enough!
- By C. Vincent on 03-05-14
By: Laura Lippman
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Alligator Candy
- A Memoir
- By: David Kushner
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From award-winning journalist David Kushner, Alligator Candy is a reported memoir about family, survival, and the unwavering power of love. David Kushner grew up in the early 1970s in the Florida suburbs. It was when kids still ran free, riding bikes and disappearing into the nearby woods for hours at a time. One morning in 1973, however, everything changed. David’s older brother, Jon, biked through the forest to the convenience store for candy, and never returned.
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Very well done
- By Nic on 06-27-18
By: David Kushner
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The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
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Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
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Here's the Story
- Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
- By: Maureen McCormick
- Narrated by: Maureen McCormick
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all. But what viewers didn't know about the always sunny, perfect Marcia was that offscreen, her real-life counterpart, Maureen McCormick was living a very different - and not so wonderful - life. Maureen tells the shocking and inspirational true story of the beloved teen and the woman she became.
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Gripping
- By Chris on 08-12-14
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Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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Pieces of Me
- Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters
- By: Lizbeth Meredith
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1994, Lizbeth Meredith said good-bye to her four- and six year-old daughters for a visit with their noncustodial father only to learn days later that they had been kidnapped and taken to their father's home country of Greece. Twenty-nine and just on the verge of making her dreams of financial independence for her and her daughters come true, Lizbeth now faced a $100,000 problem on a $10 an hour budget.
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You really won't want to stop listening!
- By Artist's Eye on 07-17-18
By: Lizbeth Meredith
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White like Her
- By: Gail Lukasik PhD, Kenyatta D. Berry - foreword
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.
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Disappointed
- By Yoli on 06-06-18
By: Gail Lukasik PhD, and others
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I want more!!!
- By Mrstlg on 04-11-20
By: Lisa Wingate
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Oklahoma, 1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Augusta Radley knows that her stepfather doesn’t have good intentions toward the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home as wards. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees to the woods, taking six-year-old Nessa with her. Together they begin a perilous journey to the remote Winding Stair Mountains, the notorious territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, Ollie and Nessa form an unlikely band with others like themselves, struggling to stay one step ahead of those who seek to exploit them . . . or worse.
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Hidden stories are the best
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What listeners say about The Foundling
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Erika
- 06-11-17
Excellent true story that keeps you guessing!
Great listen! Few newer autobiographies have this much mystery and suspense. The book kept you guessing and then searching online for the latest updates (epilogue was written in 2015).
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2 people found this helpful
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- Girdie
- 04-29-21
A true story that’s easy to get into.
It’s slow, almost monotonous but good for background listening while doing other things. It’s easy to keep up while concentrating on a task. Good for drifting off to sleep. If this were fiction it would be very boring but it makes a difference that it’s true. I found it interesting. I’m glad I bought it.
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1 person found this helpful
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- COJoebro
- 05-19-17
The Universal Questions about Identity Many Face, Distilled by an Extreme Individual Example
Worth reading. The truth outs and then we reckon. It is possible to be compelled to know, afraid to learn, very hurt and willing to go forward.
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1 person found this helpful
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- nichole
- 01-11-18
Great, Great book!
A rollercoaster of emotions. At times sooo very heartbreaking...then the moments of light, shown bright!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Neona
- 09-16-20
Fascinating Mystery
Although this is a biography, quite a bit of the story is a true crime mystery. A baby is abducted from the hospital at one day old and three years later the mother is gven a boy and told "this is your son". But is it really? There was no DNA or other definitive proof available at the time. Paul always felt like he was an alien, he didn't belong. So as an adult, he set out to find out the answers to his question, "Am I the kidnapped baby? and if I'm not, then who am I and where is the baby?"
The story is about a man who is trying to find out who he really is. I didn't Google his name or look for any of the news shows that featured him before listening to this story. I didn't want to know how the story ended before I even heard how it started. I found the whole story well written and fascinating.
And if you are at all interested in genealogy and finding your family members, this book talks a lot about the process and gives some insight as to how sites like 23andMe work.
I loved the story, it was worth every penny.
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- Letitia D. Estes
- 05-29-17
Couldn't stop listening.
Brought me to tears several times. I became obsessed with his obsession to find the truth.
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- Speech Pro
- 01-06-23
The voice of the narrator
For some reason, I did not care for the narrator's voice. He did a good job, but sometimes it just seemed the slightest bit whiney. Thankfully, it was not overwhelming and I truly enjoyed the content of the book.
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- Tim Kain
- 08-17-22
Screamed inside the whole way through
Very well performed. Well enough that I couldn’t stop screaming inside myself. Every turn this guys takes is the opposite of what he should be doing. Without giving away the story the lack of courage to protect himself. Then the lack of intelligence to walk away and protect the two people most important in his life - abandoning them to find the people that didn’t care enough to love him as a baby. Life is now and what has happened - not what might have been. Who you are is not who you could have been if if if if. The future is the only thing you can influence. Seven years later, I hope you have learned to love the family you have, not the one that you never did.
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- TerriR
- 09-14-24
The challenges and how it consumed his life
I don’t want to say with I disliked because that would ruin the story for the next reader. Such turmoil that he went through
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- Anonymous User
- 01-07-18
Interesting Story
Although I remember this story from the news it was still a good book to read and get more detail. Like many others that have reviewed this book I agree that there was too much detail that wasn’t related to the main story. And I was disappointed in how it ended. Unlike all the other reviewers I did NOT like the narrator AT ALL. His way of reading/speaking bugged me.
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2 people found this helpful