Chosen: A story based on true events

Abstract

This is a story that is neither memoir nor fiction, but a work of autofiction. Memoir tells a true story as the author remembers it—real life experiences shared with intention. A novel is a tale spun from the author’s imagination—invented characters and plot taking place in an invented world. But somewhere between the two is a middle ground—a story that blends reality with fiction—a story of things that happened and things that didn’t, people who were real and people who weren’t. Therein lies autofiction and my book, Chosen. Chosen is the story of a boy who grew up adopted. When young Chase Engel’s well-intentioned, but tough-minded adoptive parents cut off his college funding, it was the push he needed to search for information about his birth and the people who gave him away. Longing for an emotional connection and concrete answers about who he is, he finds both, but is thrust into a reality of betrayal, desperation and desire. Chase learns his conception was a mistake made by two reckless searchers—she was a shy, doe-eyed art student, and he a local television personality and married father of four. Like Chase, they each carried a heavy emotional burden without resolution, for decades, until the day all three meet as adults. The circumstances of that day—a meeting of strangers who shared both a profound attachment and a fateful void—are tangled with deeply intense and confusing emotions that changes each of their lives, and the lives of those closest to them, forever.