Don't Call Her Lisa Steinberg: The Story of Michelle Launders and Her Daughter Lisa by Michele Launders & Panina Spiegel

Don't Call Her Lisa Steinberg: The Story of Michelle Launders and Her Daughter Lisa by Michele Launders & Panina Spiegel

"I Wish Nobody Outside of My Family and Friends Had Ever Heard of Me. Because That Would Mean That My Daughter Was Still Alive."

Several years have passed since paramedics found six-year-old Lisa's battered body lying face down on the bathroom floor of Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum's filthy New York apartment. Yet the shocking headlines, the trial that thrust two people who had illegally adopted a child into the national spotlight, and the tragic story of child abuse still remain heartbreakingly vivid.

Lost but at the heart of Lisa's story is Michele Launders, Lisa's natural mother. Who is the woman who brought Lisa into the world? Why did she give her baby up for adoption? And most of all, what gave her the courage to sacrifice her anonymity, reclaim her child's body, and restore to Lisa her only birthright: her name? Now, Michele Launders steps forward to reveal how she, a frightened teenage mother, became the unwitting pawn of a doctor and lawyer who would unspeakably betray her. And we come to know Michele Launders as the inspiring woman she is today: a champion of birth mother's rights; a spokesperson for the many abused children who cannot give voice to their pain; and finally, as the constant, unfaltering mother who surrendered her privacy to bury her daughter with dignity and love.