Finding Baby Holly: Lost to a Cult, Surviving My Parents' [...]

Holly Marie was forty-two years old the day she found out she was missing.

At ten months old, Holly Marie was brought to the door of a church by three barefoot women in white robes and head coverings. Adopted by the pastor and raised in a loving Christian home, Holly nevertheless struggled with the ache of not knowing what had happened to her biological parents. She still felt their absence even as she married and started a family of her own.

When two detectives showed up at the restaurant where she worked and informed her that she had a large family in Florida who had been searching for her for over 40 years, Holly's past became the reality of her present, and she began the sometimes painful journey of discovering the truth about her origins: Her parents had been brutally murdered, their case still unsolved.

With the help of law enforcement across four states, forensic genealogists, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and her newly discovered family members, the missing pieces began to come together. Except these-why had her parents been murdered? And who had murdered them? She soon found out that the truth leads not always to answers but sometimes to more questions, that it also brings healing and restoration, and that we must surrender our unknowns to God until, in His perfect timing, all truths are revealed.

Finding Baby Holly is the true, inspiring story of a wife and mother who was "missing" for over forty years after her parents' murders, the persistent detectives who never stopped investigating, and the birth family who never lost hope in finding her.

HOLLY MARIE has always treasured family. Unbeknownst to her, she was a young baby when a mysterious trio of unidentified women brought her to the doorstep of a young pastor who then adopted her and raised her in a loving Christian home. In the forty-two years since her birth parents' murders, she has leaned on her faith as she married her husband, Troy, and became the mother of five precious children. She has held a wide variety of jobs: a restaurant server, factory packaging assembler, gas station worker, bread baker, and powdered milk mixer. After earning her associates degree in accounting at Moraine Park Technical College in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, she worked in an accounting firm, became a tax preparer, and served in the accounting office at a furniture store. She particularly appreciates two faithful bosses who shined God's light on her path and that of her family. "They are like family to me," she says. Holly lives with Troy and their family in a small town in Oklahoma.