The autobiography of a foster mother. “Why be a foster mother? What does it entail? Many problems, hard work, dealing with dirty habits, bad language and trying to explain to small children why their own world has come crashing down around them. My world once came crashing down. ...” Mary Shrimpton had TB. However, she recovered, but was then told she should have no more children. “I knew then what I would do, I would find a child whom nobody wanted, and once the idea had germinated, I was eager to get going.” Read this if you do have time for tears. You will need a box of tissues!

This is the true story of the (ultimately successful) endeavour to find, extract and adopt an infant from an “orphanage” in post revolutionary Romania despite the unhelpful and sometimes downright obstructive attitude of both the UK and the Romanian authorities. The author describes the horrors of Orphanage Number One in Bucharest, the poverty and endemic corruption which he faced on a daily basis and his struggle to raise awareness in both jurisdictions of the damage inflicted upon the children by the general indifference to their plight. The book also recounts the remarkable friendship which was forged with a Bucharest University graduate who became interpreter, guide and, ultimately, Godfather to the child who was rescued.

From the Back Cover: I have always written. From as far back in my life as I can remember I wrote poems, stories, random sentences that never went anywhere. Not Done Yet... is the start of actually putting my writing together and sending it out to the world. I don’t know where it will land. I am hoping it strikes somewhere around your heart and helps you awaken something in yourself that calls you to a better place, forgotten memory or inspiration for tomorrow. Some pieces contained herein are longer, but not necessarily more important. They just needed more words. May they all fall gently.

Not Exactly as Planned is a captivating, deeply moving account of adoption and the unexpected challenges of raising a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. Rosenbaum writes about family, community and the ability to rise above a tragic diagnosis with insight and clarity, while weaving in the everyday aspects of life: bird-watching, bar mitzvahs, saving the Toronto Islands, the collision of ’60s idealism with the real world, and family secrets. With compassion and humour, she tells a story that is achingly unique yet universal to all parents.

Largely autobiographical, this is a book about an unusual life. It begins and ends with Luke, the author’s son, adopted in Brazil in 1976. It addresses the distressing process of sub-fertility and the difficult and frustrating process of adoption in the U.K. and follows the author’s journey to Brazil and the subsequent and distinctly illegal adoption of her son Luke. It covers the instant motherhood experienced by the adoptive parent and the touching moment of bonding with the baby. It then goes back in time and traces the author’s working-class background and growing up in South East London during the war and evacuation. The subsequent breakdown of her marriage to her French husband, coping with single parenthood, alcoholism and the re-shaping of her life constitutes a major part of this book. In 1982, whilst living on a houseboat on the Thames with her son Luke, she followed a full-time Bachelor of Arts degree at Kingston Polytechnic. Island life on a houseboat at Hampton Court is fully explored and it was during these years that she met her current partner, professional musician Tony Bell. In 1998, they retired from London and led an idyllic life in the South of France until 2002 when she discovered a lump in her right breast. Eight years later following radiotherapy, surgery and anti-cancer medication, she is apparently cured. The final part of this book is “Luke’s story”; how he coped with the knowledge that he was an adopted third-world child, the breakdown of his parent’s marriage and their subsequent divorce and his mother’s cancer. About the Author: Born in South East London into a working-class docker’s family in 1935, Irene Kay was a “blitz kid” and spent the war years in five separate periods of evacuation. After leaving school in 1952, she worked in London as a secretary and in 1961 went to Paris where she lived with a French family as their Au Pair. In 1962, she met a young Frenchman in a Left Bank jazz club and they returned to England together in 1966. In March 1998, she took part in a Radio 2 program on the subject of “Motherhood,” her particular angle being that of the adoptive parent. As had always been her intention, in November 1998 she retired from her job in London and, with her partner of 26 years, returned to France to live permanently. She now lives in the South of France near Montpellier with her partner, a professional musician. Since being in France, she has written many articles for the English-language publications and, in 1999, had a regular twice-weekly column in the Midi Libre newspaper. She writes about local events, particularly music and the local British musicians. She is a regular contributor to the bi-monthly magazine Languedoc Sun. She also writes on the issues of integration into the French way of life and culture. She has one son, Luke, who lives in Kent and works at the University of Greenwich.

Biology is only one way of being related. This deep realization of familial love that transcends convention, genetics and race is the underlying tenet of this book. From her days as a newlywed, traveling abroad with husband Ian, the story traces the winding path to motherhood of Amanda Harvey. Throughout tales of life in Europe and Asia, Harvey finds that the blossoming of an ever strengthening maternal urge begins to shape the choices she makes. The narrative follows the couple’s journey through two interracial adoptions in Taiwan. The excitement and utter joy of bringing home their baby daughter, and 18 months later an infant son, as well as the emotional roller coaster that their lives become in that period. The final chapters find the Harveys in the present day, raising their beautiful Taiwanese children in the children’s country of ethnic origin and embarking for a third time on the tumultuous and incredible adventures of parenthood and adoption.

From the Dust Jacket: In this fascinating new biography of screen legend Joan Crawford, Charlotte Chandler draws on exclusive and remarkably candid interviews with Crawford herself and with others who knew her, including first husband Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Crawford’s daughter Cathy. As a result, this biography is fresh and revealing, a brand-new look at one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed stars.

Joan Crawford was born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, in 1908 (as she always insisted, though other sources disagreed). Her father abandoned the family, and her mother soon remarried; Lucille was now known as Billie Cassin. Young Billie loved to dance and achieved her early success in silent films playing a dancer. Her breakthrough role came in Our Dancing Daughters. Soon married to Hollywood royalty, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (who called her “Billie”), she was a star in her own right, playing opposite John Barrymore and a stellar cast in M-G-M’s Grand Hotel.

Crawford was cast opposite another young star, Clark Gable, in several films. They would sometimes play lovers on screen—and off as well. After her marriage to Fairbanks broke up, Crawford married actor Franchot Tone. That marriage soon began to show strains, and Crawford was sometimes seen riding with Spencer Tracy, who gave her a horse she named Secret. Crawford left M-G-M for Warners, and around the time she married her third husband, Phillip Terry, she won her Oscar for best actress (one of three times she was nominated) in Mildred Pierce. But by the 1950s the film roles dried up. Crawford and Terry had divorced, and Crawford married her fourth husband, Pepsi-Cola executive Alfred Steele. In 1962, she and longtime cinematic rival Bette Davis staged a brief comeback in the macabre but commercial What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Following Steele’s death, Crawford became a director of Pepsi-Cola while she continued raising her four adopted children. Although her daughter Christina would publish the scathing memoir Mommie Dearest after Crawford’s death, Chandler offers a contrasting portrait of Crawford, drawing in part on reminiscences of younger daughter Cathy among others.

Not the Girl Next Door is perhaps Charlotte Chandler’s finest Hollywood biography yet, an intimate portrait of a great star who was beautiful, talented, glamorous, and surprisingly vulnerable.

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About the Author: Charlotte Chandler is the author of several biographies of actors and directors, including Groucho Marx, Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis, and Ingrid Bergman. She is a member of the board of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and lives in New York City.

An anthology of poetry, fiction, essays and artwork by Jody Bolz, Carole Burns, Grace Cavalieri, Christina Daub, Mary Doroshenk, Patricia Gray, Clarinda Harriss, Anne Hasselbrack, Jacqueline Jules, Mary Ann Larkin, Lyn Lifshin, Hilary Tham, Donna Vitucci, Mary-Sherman Willis, and tons more. Includes a section on infertility, as well as one essay each from the perspective of a prospective adoptive mother (“Purple Fleece and Motherhood” by Katherine Mikkelson) and a birth mother (“Holy Places” by Stephanie Brown).

How hard would you be willing to fight, to fulfill your dreams? What would be your breaking point? Angela and Jason Vesely had a simple wish: to have a baby and start their family together. A common desire of most couples, but not always so easy for a growing number of the population. Their story of reaching a seemingly average goal is anything but typical. Were they able to conquer the extreme circumstances they faced on their unimaginable journey? This is the story of the Vesely’s battle for their son. An adoption agency and birth mother want to take back a three-month-old baby boy from a couple who wanted to give him a loving home after learning that the adoptive mother was pregnant. The 22-year-old biological mother (who had signed away all parental rights) said that she wanted the parents who adopted her son to not have their own biological children. She wanted them to either raise her son as an only child or to adopt if they wanted to expand their family (Does she have the right to dictate these terms?). But Jason and Angela Vesely say they didn’t purposely hide Angela’s pregnancy when they applied to adopt two years prior; as this is an impossibility. They were guardedly optimistic about this pregnancy because Angela had miscarried three times before. They say they were never asked whether she was pregnant or not and were never told of the birth mothers wishes for no biological children. They loved their adopted son as if he was their own and an agency wanted to take him away. A court battle ensued.

Growing up in a world dominated by fear and loneliness, Fiona knew that something was wrong, but assumed it was all her fault. A breakdown at the age of eighteen brought her to the brink of despair, but proved to be the turning point. A combination of cognitive behaviour therapy, friendships at university and gaining a personal faith gave her new hope. Subsequent failure to meet the right man led to plunging self-esteem and a return to loneliness, but she eventually found fulfilment through adopting two baby boys with Down’s Syndrome. When her sons were teenagers, she was finally diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 48, enabling her to make sense of her life and gain the self acceptance that had eluded her for so long. This is a true story. Only the names have been changed.

A former kindergarten teacher who’d been trained to memorialize her day-today experiences applies this habit to her home life after taking in an orphaned five-year-old boy, when her and her husband’s preference for a girl was thwarted by a paucity of acceptable available female orphans.

From the Preface: I SHOULD like to say a few words of explanation to my readers before they begin my note-book. It is not a novel with a purpose. It is a notebook with a purpose, however, and I wish it to start its career honestly.
     When I was a young girl, studying in one of the most thorough kindergarten training-schools in the country, I was required to keep a journal in which were recorded with unflinching honesty the results of all my teaching under supervision. This journal was handed in to the Director once a week, read, and unsparingly criticized by her. In it I was obliged to tell of the work done with my pupils during each half-hour, what the lesson was intended to teach them, physically, mentally, and spiritually; whether I felt that it was a success; if not, where my failure had been and whether I thought I could improve on it if given another trial. I was also expected to write down any especially bright or significant remarks made by the children. The ostensible purpose of this was to keep the Director closely in touch with the work of her unpaid assistants. The great good of it to the conscientious student, however, was the habit of self-examination which it formed. Many a time I have come to understand my pupils and myself much better because of the quiet thought I was obliged to give to our work together, at a time when there were no conflicting calls for my help and no temptation to flurry or impatience.
     It has seemed most natural, therefore, since I left my beloved work of training both kindergarten children and kindergarten teachers, to continue in my own home the habit of earlier years. A memorandum pad on my dresser and another on my desk have caught the hurried jottings of my busy days, and when my boy was sleeping it has been happy and profitable work to elaborate the hastily made notes.
     All mothers cannot do this, I know, yet all are meeting from day to day many of the problems which come to me. So it may chance that, following my experiences on the printed page, they will find their own perceptions somewhat quickened, and profit, not only by my little successes, but by my failures as well. It is a great deal to form the habit of looking beneath the surface of the day’s happenings; it is a great deal for some of us even to want to do so.
     There is a second purpose to this volume. All over this broad land there are homeless children and there are childless homes. It seems such a radical step to take, this bringing into a quiet and well-ordered house a child of strange parentage, and there are always so many ready to prophesy evil consequences, particularly among one’s own relatives, who become suddenly anxious for the honor of the family name. But one who has tried it knows that it is not such a startling thing to do after all, and if the laying bare of her own deepest experiences results in the opening of one more home to some friendless child, she will not begrudge the effort that it costs.
     Because these notes are written with such honesty and are of such a personal character, I ask to be permitted a nom de plume. The only reservation I have made is in the matter of names.

From the Dust Jacket: Now in her early eighties, Martha Gellhorn is as irascible, passionate, and committed to her work as the day she did the unspeakable and declared herself an independent woman by dropping out of Bryn Mawr to pursue a career as a foreign correspondent. Her graphic articles covering every war from the Spanish Revolution to Vietnam and Nicaragua are considered the most eloquent ever published. But, to her chagrin, she’s best known as the third of Hemingway’s four wives.

Born into a privileged family in St. Louis, Missouri, the headstrong Gellhorn felt confined by the genteel pretensions of women around her who “crave equality but also the status of an art object.” Choosing poverty over passivity, she worked as a reporter covering the morgues. She then bartered her way to Europe to begin a grand adventure backpacking. When she returned to the United States, she worked for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, writing charged articles about the crushing poverty of the Dust Bowl. She met with the Roosevelts, with whom she became lifelong friends, and lobbied strenuously for greater assistance to the poor.

Her indomitable, unintimidated spirit, not to mention her “distracting legs” and stunning blond beauty, made her irresistible to men. She bewitched Eleanor Roosevelt’s secret love, cast a spell over the dashing French peace activist Bertrand de Jouvenel, and enraptured Hemingway with her courage as they dodged shell fire together in the trenches of Spain. But Gellhorn, trying to balance career and marriage, always chose to cover the adventures of another war. She published five novels and seven prize-winning collections of her explosive journalism, all still in print.

In this first full-scale study of her life, Carl Rollyson demonstrates that the thrilling life of America’s most important war correspondent makes for a biography that reads like an adventure novel. Today’s women can look to Martha as a role model who did it all before it was considered respectable.

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About the Author: Carl Rollyson is Professor of Art and Dean of Education at Baruch College in New York City. He is the author of Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress and Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy.

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By the Same Author: A Higher Form of Cannibalism?: Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography (2005, Ivan R. Dee).

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Part Four, the section of the book covering the period from 1948-1988, during which she adopted her son, Sandro (“Sandy”) Gellhorn.

See also, the author’s other work, listed above, in which he discusses the Gellhorn biography at some length.

A career woman in her mid-thirties confronts the obstacles of infertility, insensitivity, and incompetency when she struggles to have a baby, adopts a child, and later gives birth to a healthy infant.

Bestselling author and foster carer Casey Watson shares the shocking true story of Tyler, an abused eleven-year-old who, after stabbing his step-mother, had nowhere else to go. Knowing a little of Tyler’s past—his biological mother, a heroin addict, died of an overdose when he was three—Casey feels bound to do her best for him. It isn’t easy; Tyler continuously lashes out, even trying to attack Casey herself. Investigation into his earlier childhood reveals why: forced to watch his mother die he was found emaciated and traumatised two days later, then delivered to a father who didn’t want him and a step-mother who beat him. With the horrific events of his past now vividly affecting the course of his present, Casey and her husband Mike are determined to veer him away from the violence and drugs they fear he will come to depend on. Heartbreaking and profoundly moving, Nowhere to Go tells the story of a child forsaken by his family but fought for by his foster carers.

From the Back Cover: Meet the Overcomers!

Discover the charming, often amusing story of a family that moved from being overcome by hardship—to being overcomers through the grace of Jesus Christ.

Here is a warm, personal account of a couple whose three children faced serious health problems: one had cerebral palsy, and two suffered from hyperactivity.

Read how the family learned to lean on God to help them overcome and to open their hearts to three more children with special health problems.

Read the Wheelers’ story and be encouraged, entertained and inspired!

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Bonnie Wheeler was born in West Virginia, was raised in Kentucky and Florida, and has been a Californian since 1961.

About the Author: David Livianu is originally from Romania, now a proud U.S. citizen since 1986, living in New York City. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music. Since 1990 he has been involved in helping Romania’s orphans. His latest project since Romania closed its doors on international adoptions in 2001, was to research and document the adoption laws and procedures for all 194 countries of the world. The goal: to make all the critical decision making information available to parents and adoption professionals ... thus reducing the exorbitant costs and the inordinate waiting time!

From the Publisher: Okay, Which One of You Took My Sanity?: A Fun Guide to Foster, Adoptive, and Other Kinds of Parenting is a humorous he-said/she-said breakdown of parenting strategies. Hilarious true-to-life stories reveal common threads between two families facing unique challenges and even more unique children. Together the stories encourage other parents to embrace change rather than “fix” family dynamics. Matt and Claudia, both adoptive parents, each exhibit distinctive parenting styles within their own adoptive families. Still, both apply the same principles to pilot the demands of special needs parenting. Fun and laughter might be the primary intention of this “Dr. Phil meets Erma Bombeck” concoction, but it ruptures with insightful parenting techniques. In between laughs, you might discover that there is something very profound about being a parent ... but probably not.

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About the Author: Claudia M. Fletcher, B.A., M.Ed., is an adoptive parent, along with her husband, Bart, of 12 children born between 1986 and 1998. She is also an adoption professional and a national adoption speaker who combines humor with years of experience to encourage, instruct, and entertain parents and professionals alike. She resides in Minnesota with her husband and some of the twelve children (the number of people living at home changes on a daily basis)!

Matthew W. Hoffman graduated with a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and spent time working in special education classrooms and healthcare. He and his wife, Krista, were licensed foster parents in the Baltimore/Washington area specializing in therapeutic care for nearly a decade. Their book, Hattie’s Advocate, a story of special-needs parenting has remained an online bestseller under adoption, children with special needs, and family relationships categories.

From the Publisher: Adopting a child over the age of two can present unique challenges and opportunities, even for experienced parents. It is one thing to understand about adopting an older child and quite another to live with that child. This book presents both the author’s personal experiences after having adopted three children (ages nine to twelve) and the results of her research of over thirty families who adopted older children.

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About the Author: Grace Robinson of Fort Collins, Colorado, was a Middle School teacher for 20 years. In 1983 when she wanted a Middle School-aged child she would not have to give up in June, she adopted a twelve-year-old. In the next three years, she adopted a thirteen-year-old and a nine-year-old. Grace has been an active member of Family Resources, a private, non-profit agency specializing in older child adoption.

In this informative, spirited, personal account, Valeria Woods encourages Christians to open their homes to the experience of fostering children, and adoption. This book covers the process and details required, and gives prospective parents the emotional and faith-based structure for taking this important and powerful step. Providing a home for a homeless child is, by far, one of the greatest examples of Christian love. It is a true twenty-four hour a day mission! Valeria Woods lives in Memphis, Tennessee and has been an educator for twenty-one years. She brings her personal experience and perspective, as both a former foster child and foster parent to nineteen children over the years, to the inspired writing of this book.

From the Publisher: Mired in debt and on the run from a series of broken homes, about-to-be-divorced Debra Monroe pulls up in front of a tumbledown cabin outside a small Texas town. Its isolation—miles from her teaching job in a neighboring city—feels right. She buys the house and ultimately doubles its size as she waits for the call from the adoption agency to tell her she’s going to be a mom. Now in her forties, she is swept into the strange new world of single motherhood, complicated by the fact that she’s white and her daughter is black. As Monroe learns to deal with her daughter’s hair and to re-enter the dating scene, all the while coping with her own and her daughter’s major illnesses, they live under the magnified scrutiny of the small, conservative town. Confronting her past in order to make a better life for her daughter, Monroe rebuilds not only a half-ruined cabin in the woods but her sense of what it is that makes a sustainable family.

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About the Author: Debra Monroe lived in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Utah, and North Carolina before moving to Texas in 1992. She is the author of four previous books, including two collections of stories, The Source of Trouble and A Wild, Cold State, and two novels, Newfangled and Shambles. Her books have been widely reviewed and have won many awards, including the Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, the John Gardner Fellowship, and The Violet Crown Award. Her books have appeared on “Best Ten” lists in Elle and Vanity Fair magazines and in Borders’ “Original Voices” series. She has published fiction and nonfiction in many journals and magazines. She teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University and lives in Austin, Texas.

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By the Same Author: Shambles (2004), among others.

From the Publisher: This book speaks with unique power and intimacy to the millions of people across North America who, directly or indirectly, have had their lives touched by the adoption process. Here are the moving stories, taken from actual case histories, of adoptees who have tried to uncover a hidden past; of birth parents discovered by sons or daughters they had given up for adoption years before; and of adoptive parents who must cope with feelings of rejection, jealousy and bewilderment.

On December 28, 1978, flight attendant Joan Wheeler was one of eleven people killed when United Airlines flight 173 crash-landed six miles short of the runway at Portland International Airport. This book chronicles the story of Ms. Wheeler’s life, tragic death and the resulting legal firestorm when her uncle, the author and executor of her estate, tried to fulfill her wishes regarding her adopted son, David.

This is a mother’s story of survival. It is no more and no less than any mother could have done under similar circumstances. A child is born with such incredible medical problems and challenges, a whole community is brought to bear to help keep her alive and her family from crumbling under the terrible strain. It speaks of strength, and the illusion of control. One Brief Shining Moment is a testament to one small family, trying its best to stay together, body and soul, and surviving the worst. It is a heart breaking, gut wrenching story to read, but one that demonstrates the depth of love. When one’s alternatives are limited, you gotta go with what you got; and this is going with what you got, at its best. A must read for any parent who has ever faced a medical challenge with a child, as it gives insights only another parent can appreciate. About the Author: Arlene Swirsky lives in Central Massachusetts with her husband Bruce, son Greg, two Yorkshire Terrorists and a cat. She has covered news for the Worcester Telegram and also written for The Exceptional Parent magazine.

From the Dust Jacket: Q: Isn’t it a rule that siblings should not be separated?

A: There are no absolute rules on the separation of siblings, but agencies do try very hard, in most cases, to see to it that they stay together. Unfortunately, few adoptive parents want to take on two children simultaneously. You should certainly be informed as to the existence of siblings, however, and given the opportunity to apply to adopt both children.

Finally here’s a book all parents can turn to with their questions about adoption. Presented in a straightforward, accessible format are all the answers about this complex subject for prospective parents, and perhaps eventually, for the child they adopt. Drawing on the latest available facts and figures from dozens of organizations and agencies, as well as speaking directly to parents and children from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances, this book covers both the legal and technical aspects of adoption, and the crucial emotional aspects as well.

From the moment they begin to consider the process of adoption, prospective parents face a variety of overwhelming issues, choices, and decisions. Now, thanks to this book, they will learn every facet of adoption, from what they can expect from “home studies,” to the red tape they may encounter when adopting a foreign orphan, to the difference between private and public agencies. A thorough discussion of the controversial Surrogate Mother alternative is also included, making The 125 Most Asked Questions About Adoption the most up-to-date primer of its kind. Of course, Paul Baldwin also presents answers to such emotionally fraught questions as the best way to tell children that they are adopted, and when it is best to do so. The concerns of adopted children are also addressed through discussions ranging from the search for a biological parent to what medical information an adopted child can expect to have access to, and the best way to respond to insensitive classmates.

The 125 Most Asked Questions About Adoption covers every aspect of the adoption process and will help adoptive parents and children alike understand the unique issues that will face them in the course of their lives.

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Paul Baldwin is an actor and singer who has recently turned his talents toward writing.

I would like to invite you on a journey. A journey “seeking peace.” Travel along with me as God’s “Life Plan” for me begins to unfold. We will see together how God sets His plan in motion. Let the story begin: It’s 1963, I am 15 years old. God saves my life. Not once, but twice! Find out how God returns me to the path that leads me to the woman I will marry. I will share with you about the beauty of adoption and the difficulties that can come with it. How I have come to realize there is no greater gift on earth, than the gift of a child. You will see how my faith and trust in the our Lord develops and grows over the years. You will also see how God has blessed my family and myself in so many ways. So, please join me on this journey of 50 years. I promise you will laugh, you will cry, you will feel compassion. I hope that in these few pages, you will discover the “peace you are seeking.” A, husband, a father, a friend in Christ.

Have you ever considered adopting a child? For many centuries, the word, “adoption,” has struck fear in the hearts of most adults. Fear not! Adoption can be one of the most fulfilling and joyful experiences of an adult’s life. Through One Million Babies, Gale Duran tells the story of how a precious baby boy named Jeb was rescued out of a hopeless situation through adoption into a loving family. Through Jeb’s story, Gale applies her own experience with adopting and raising her own grandson to help educate you about the joys, challenges, and process of adoption. In the story, you’ll meet the boy’s mother, Shawna, a hurting woman who searched for “love in all the wrong places.” She conceives an unwanted child, and gives birth to a baby boy. Just before Shawna abandons the baby, a compassionate and helpful woman named Lois intervenes and teaches Shawna about a better option: adoption. When Jeb is adopted by his loving family, you’ll find out what it is like inside a foster home for unwanted children. This book will help to open your eyes and your heart to the possibility of adopting a child, and you’ll feel more equipped to move forward in the process.

The husband beats his young wife, who is pregnant with her second child. This results in the loss of her unborn baby and in the ability to have another child. Years after her divorce, she meets a wonderful man and falls in love and they marry. Although, her life is happy she longs for another child and prays for one. Will God deliver with a miracle for both the birth mother and for her? Though many complications arise, she takes a leap of faith and takes this journey that ultimately leads to her “One Miracle Under God.”

From the Dust Jacket: Augusten Burroughs called Kathy Harrison’s Another Place at the Table a “riveting and profoundly moving story of a hero, disguised as an everyday woman.” In One Small Boat, Harrison continues her narrative on foster care with the story of one little girl who arrived on her doorstep and challenged everything Harrison thought she knew about foster care and the children it seeks to shelter.

Daisy was five when she first entered Harrison’s bustling household. Mother of three children by birth, three by adoption, and a handful of foster kids always coming and going, Harrison had ten children under her roof at any given time. But Daisy was, in many ways, unique. Unlike the parents of most of Kathy’s foster kids, Daisy’s birth mother wasn’t poor, uneducated, or drug-addicted. She just could not take care of a child, and the effects of this abandonment on Daisy were heart-wrenching. Fear and anxiety marked her every move; she scarcely ate, she spun restlessly around the room, and she seemed to have a severe speech impediment. After two weeks in Kathy’s loving home, however, Daisy began to thrive.

An intimate portrait of foster care in America and of the children whose lives are forever shaped by it, One Small Boat considers whether a sense of home and belonging can ever be restored to children after they have been taken away. In this beautifully written book, Kathy Harrison describes the lessons she learned from Daisy, lessons about resilience after heartbreak, courage after fear, and the power of love to heal even the deepest wounds.

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About the Author: Kathy Harrison has been a foster parent to hundreds of children. In 1996 she and her husband were named Massachusetts Foster Parents of the Year, and in 2002 they received the prestigious Goldie Rogers Award. A member of the board of the National Foster Parent Association and the Massachusetts State Foster Parent Association, Harrison lives near Northampton, Massachusetts.

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By the Same Author: Another Place at the Table (2003).

From the Dust Jacket: “Blaine, I think this little girl is our baby.” Little did Kathy Yorgason realize those words would come to mean.

Charity Afton Yorgason was born without a brain. She had a brain stem, which operated her autonomic nervous system and allowed her lungs and heart to work. But, her foster parents were told, she would never use any of her senses, never experience joy or love, never feel pain or any other physical sensation. And then would most likely die before she was two years old. Blaine and Kathy’s response was simple: “If she needs a home, we’ll give happy to give it to her.”

So Charity was adopted by the Yorgason family, and the miracles began. This little girl who was never supposed to experience any more than a vegetative existence quickly refuted all the medical "evidence" and proved she was capable of a great many things. She could smile and laugh, she could hear, she could follow people with her eyes, she could recognize loved ones. Regrettably, she could also obviously feel pain, and her suffering at times was almost incomprehensible.

But the greatest of Charity’s attributes was the love that radiated from her smile and her eyes to touch the hearts of all who knew her. She literally and permanently changed lives for the better just by being alive.

This astounding, true account is expanded in this edition to cover all the years of Charity’s life, and includes many photographs. Her story is a stunning testimony of the power of the spirit, the love of God, and the purpose of mortality.

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About the Author: Blaine M. Yorgason is the author of more than fifty books, as well as numerous articles and short stories. His novel The Windwalker was produced as an award-winning movie; Chester, I Love You was filmed by Disney Productions as the made-for-television movie Thanksgiving Promise; and Charlie’s Monument has been an acclaimed musical production. He and his wife, Kathy, have seven children and eleven grandchildren.