Monica is an adoptee, birthmother, survivor, and the author of Practically Still a Virgin.

Adopted from an Edmonton foster home at just four months old during Canada’s 60s Scoop—a period when Indigenous babies were placed into non-Indigenous homes—she was raised by white parents in Anchorage, Alaska. Growing up during the wild oil boom era in a home marked by abuse and dysfunction, Monica rebelled against her strict Catholic upbringing and spiraled into delinquency.

At fifteen, after surviving a rape and discovering she was pregnant, Monica’s parents pushed her to give up her daughter, her only known blood relative, for adoption. Isolated from society during six long, dark months of an Alaska winter in 1973, she journaled

her feelings while preparing to “give up” her baby. The only thing she held onto was the hope of finding her daughter—whom she believed was a girl—eighteen years later. During her pregnancy, Monica began asking her mother more questions about her “natural

mother,” and it was then that her mother provided her with non-identifying information about her birth parents. Her sole goals became to live long enough to find both her mother and her baby.

Eight months after relinquishing her daughter, Monica moved to California, where she tried to numb her grief and shame with Scotch whiskey and cocaine. Now, after 40 years of sobriety and seven years digging into her difficult past, her memoir has been published

 and is filled with shocking twists, heartbreak, suspense, humor, hope, and redemption, spanning from Alaska’s oil boom era to pivotal moments in Washington, California, Canada, and Michigan.