Heartbreaking, shocking stories of Chinese mothers who have lost or had to abandon children and are still searching.

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is a collection of stories from Chinese mothers whose daughters had been wrenched from them, whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, or destructive age-old traditions and hideous economic necessity. Here, too, are the voices of adoptive mothers from different parts of the world.

Some of these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages - and others still, in the countryside, even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth and drowned, like kittens. They are stories that Xinran could not bring herself to tell previously - they were too painful and close to home.

These vivid accounts, full of harrowing, tragic detail, yet not without tender and uplifting moments, are true stories from the heart.