Joyce Connelley’s search for her birth family started when she unearthed an adoption decree in the belongings of her adoptive mother, who died in 1992. Over the next 25 years, which included the work of a private investigator she hired, Connelley, co-owner with her husband, Jim, of the Marshall Grain retailer in Colleyville, found more of her story and birth family than she bargained for. The search traversed multiple states and led to the discovery of her birth parents, siblings, nephews, nieces, distant cousins and even Jewish heritage.

Joyce Connelley with her “Reunion in Stringtown” at Talking Animals Books in Grapevine, where she has a signing July 13.

Connelley, who studied journalism at San Jose State University, unpacks the story in a book, “Reunion in Stringtown: Finding Faith, Family, and Healing,” released this spring on platforms like Amazon. The book opens with Connelley’s discovery of the adoption decree and chronicles her journey — one of disappointment, sadness and joy, but not always in that order. Connelley finds a belonging she didn’t have with her adoptive parents. She describes her mother as abusive and domineering, father as alcoholic and their marriage bitter. Connelley deftly weaves dialogue throughout the storytelling, some taken from conversations that occurred during her investigation. She sat down for an interview with 360West in the offices of Marshall Grain, which recently moved to Colleyville from Grapevine.

360West: We want to avoid spoilers so people will buy the book. But please tell us how the idea for this book project came up.

Connelley: The impetus was [my adoptive mother’s] death and finding this document in her files that indicated what my birth mother’s name was.

360West: But why did you feel the need to tell others about your story?

Connelley: I didn’t start writing it until, I guess it was 2017, when I found out who my birth father was, or we at least started looking into that. We started using DNA to try to find my birth father. For a long time, I didn’t write it because I didn’t have an ending. I didn’t know how it was going to end. But still, I think when I first started writing it, it was mainly about exorcizing the demons and that sort of thing. But I was lucky enough to have a good friend of mine edit it for me, and we talked a lot about what were other people going to get out of it? How would this story benefit other people? And that really became my goal was to share my experience in terms of how it could help other people.

360West: In the book, you tell the story of how it took almost 10 years after you found the adoption decree to get to the next big finding — about your birth mother. Tell us about that.

Connelley: California is a closed state when it comes to adoptions. Because I had so little information to start with, I had to go through a very difficult process to try to get my court records opened. And in the meantime, I spent a lot of time just doing regular detective work, trying to find her and joining support groups and sending letters to different government agencies, trying to ferret out who she might’ve been and who my birth father might’ve been, and all of that, which essentially got me nowhere. It wasn’t until I got my court records opened that I was able to track her down.

360West: So there’s a remarkable piece of dialogue in the book in which you’re listening in on a three-way call with your birth mother, being led by your investigator.

Connelley: When I finally found her, she immediately rejected me. Pretty definite that she wasn’t interested in having any contact with me whatsoever. That part wasn’t unexpected. What I think was the most heartbreaking part of it was hearing her talk about my birth brother, my half-brother, that I didn’t know anything about, and hear her talk about him and how she had abandoned him as well.

360West: Again, without spoiling the surprises, you ultimately find so many members of your birth family, are able to build positive relationships and, as the book title suggests, get to reunite regularly with a large segment. How can your story help other people?

Connelley: Just going through my life, talking to a lot of other adopted people, we share a common feeling that even those who might’ve been raised in a more loving environment than I was, a lot of us still have the feeling that we were abandoned and, on some level, unloved. And how do you heal? How do you find a supportive group of people? How do you create a new family? How do you create a new family that’s going to be supportive? The ideal is that your parents loved you and that your family comes from that. But the reality, not just for adopted people, but for a lot of people who grew up abused, is that the family you grew up in was not loving and you have to find a way in life to knit together a more loving family for yourself.