It’s a thing of beauty when a piece of nonfiction can educate without demeaning, be pointedly scathing without catching the undeserving and inspire the reader to review their community with a fresh lens. Paige Towers accomplishes all of this with What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption (University of Iowa Press).
I have known four families with adopted children. It was only after reading Towers’ book that I realized the consistencies across these adoptive situations: namely, the devout religiousness of the parents and international birthplaces of the children. Like many, I grew up hearing a narrative about those adoptions — how important parenthood was to some people, how adopting from other countries saved infants from disease, abuse, or death. I had never been pushed to interrogate this narrative, but Towers clearly lays out how such stories needed to be examined.
What They Stole chronicles two families and the historical, legal and social components that built them. Towers writes about Bertha and Harry Holt, an evangelical couple who adopted eight Korean children after the Korean War. Harry’s misguided sense of self-importance, and the religious fervor that guided many of the Holts’ decisions, ultimately resulted in the Holt Adoption Program. Under the guise of providing necessary care to orphans, it facilitated thousands of improper and illegal adoptions starting in the 1950s. A half-century later, the Sueppel family utilized the Holt Adoption Program to adopt four Korean children, building an idyllic life in Iowa City. This came to a tragic end when Steven Sueppel, the head of the family, murdered his wife, children and finally himself in a family annihilation event directly tied to his exposed financial crimes.
Towers is meticulous in her examination of the connection between the Sueppel murders and adoption practices shaped by the Holt Adoption Program. Every chapter of her book is painstakingly constructed, with extensive evidence and citations. She is skillful in integrating fact with narrative, preventing any one section of the book from feeling too dense. It would be easy, especially with heavy subject matter such as this, to immerse the reader in statistics. Towers shows impressive restraint and a gifted eye for story. She knows when to lean in, putting pressure on the reader to be critical and reflective; and when to lean back, letting her descriptive language carry her argument. This is seen most potently in her use of news article titles contrasted with the lived experience of adopted children; creating a perfect tension in the juxtaposition.
Towers ends her book with questions that no one can possibly have the full answers to. In doing so, she acknowledges the complex and still-developing nature of intercountry adoption, raising concerns with power and politics under the ever-growing shadow of declining birth rates. While many of her questions circle an unknowable future, the most haunting questions circle the buried past: how to locate the victims of child laundering, including the many babies who died of neglect and negligence within the adoption complex.
What They Stole is angry, mournful, cutting and excellently crafted. Towers sheds light on a dark facet of American history that threatens to continue unfolding.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2026 issue.
