Published Works

Now with links to websites where you can purchase my books.

Missing Links – While this non-fiction book is all about my search for my birth parents, I intended it to be more than that. Of course I wanted it to have both mass appeal (for all those involved in the adoption triangle: adoptee, birth parents and adoptive parents) and universal appeal (for all those searching for some kind of meaning) because why write a book with limited appeal?  In the end, once a book is written it no longer belongs to the author, it belongs to the reader.  The only part of this book that I maintain to this day is the theme: whatever it is we are searching for we will find along the way as long as we keep on searching.

Available  at:
Amazon (Print)
Barnes and Noble (Print)

The Adventures of Tom Tinker - What started out as a play (The Queen’s Last Birthday) written at the request of my son, Jeremy, when he was in the fourth grade, became a book about a young boy (on his way to becoming a young man) in search of his…future, for lack of a better word. Without knowing it, because I had not yet immersed myself in a serious study of myth, fairy tale, fable and folklore, I actually wrote a book that contained some of the essential ingredients found in the classic fairy tale.

Available:
Amazon (Print)
Barnes and Noble (Nook)
Amazon (Kindle)

Freedom’s Light - The genesis for this story, i.e. the characters and plot, changed radically when I realized that the story I was meant to write was not the story I thought I was supposed to write. Ignoring the admonition given to writers – write what you know about, I decided to tell my story, using characters of another race. “Freedom’s Light” is another search story, but this time it’s about the search of a young African-American, searching for his roots, his past, and his heritage. Using the structure of a fairy tale/fable this story really crosses all racial lines.

Available:
Amazon (Print)
AVAILABLE SOON ON NOOK
AVAILABLE SOON ON KINDLE

Dorothy – This Side of the Rainbow – I returned to my roots, as both a searcher and a writer to tell the ‘true’ story of Dorothy Gale. (In this case it was my vision/version of a truth.) It dawned on me that while all of us grow up (and older), L. Frank Baum’s Dorothy never aged, and that’s the way it should be; however, there are times when we wonder about a fictional character. We wonder about those parts of the character’s life that weren’t part of the original story. In this case I wondered about Dorothy before she arrived on the Gale’s farm. I also wondered what could have happened to her as she grew up. My wonderings turned into a fictional account written as a memoir.  It’s my take on Dorothy.

Available:
Amazon (Print)
Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes and Noble (Print)
Barnes and Noble (Nook)
Xlibris (Print)

Looking for a Rainbow – the story of Dorothy - I saw the potential in Dorothy’s story to be appealing to both an adult readership as well as to young adults.  Instead of being told in the first person, “Looking for a Rainbow,” written in the third person, tells the story of Dorothy from her birth up until she steps off the Gale farm as a young adult.

Available:
Amazon (Print)
Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes and Noble (Nook)
Xlibris (Print)

The Burton and Van Duzer Family History - Part genealogy, part local history and part narrative non-fiction, this book tells the story of two families: The Burtons and the Van Duzers. I wrote it at the request of Leila Burton Luce.

Amazon (Print)
Available from the author (Vincent Begley)

To Have & To Hold – This work in progress is a novel based on my play of the same name. Although a novel by genre, it is loosely based on the stories of my birth parents and my adoptive parents. By taking certain liberties, “To Have & To Hold” will tell the sometimes painful story that was often the only story known to men and women caught up in the adoption triangle when illegitimacy, adoption and infertility were subjects only talked about in whispers.