From the Dust Jacket: From his school days to his tragic early death, George Orwell, who never wrote an autobiography, chronicled the dramatic events of his turbulent life in a profusion of powerful letters. Indeed, one of the twentieth century’s most revered icons was a lively, prolific correspondent who developed in rich, nuanced dispatches the ideas that would influence generations of writers and intellectuals. This historic work-never before published in America and featuring many previously unseen letters—presents an account of Orwell’s interior life as personal and absorbing as readers may ever see.

Over the course of a lifetime, Orwell corresponded with hundreds of people, including many distinguished political and artistic figures. Witty, personal, and profound, the letters tell the story of Orwell’s passionate first love that ended in devastation and explain how young Eric Arthur Blair chose the pseudonym “George Orwell.” In missives to luminaries such as T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Cyril Connolly, and Henry Miller, he spells out his literary and philosophical beliefs. Readers will encounter Orwell’s thoughts on matters both quotidian (poltergeists and the art of playing croquet) and historical—including his illuminating descriptions of war-shattered Barcelona and pronouncements on bayonets and the immanent cruelty of chaining German prisoners.

The letters also reveal the origins of his famous novels. To a fan he wrote, “I think, and have thought ever since the war began ... that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.” A paragraph before, he explained that the British intelligentsia in 1944 were “perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history,” prefiguring the themes of 1984. Entrusting the manuscript of Animal Farm to Leonard Moore, his literary agent, Orwell describes it as “a sort of fairy story, really a fable with political meaning. ... This book is murder from the Communist point of view.”

Hardly known outside a small circle of Orwell scholars, these rare letters include Orwell’s message to Dwight Macdonald of 5 December 1946 explaining Animal Farm; his correspondence with his first translator, R.N. Raimbault (with English translations of the French originals); and the moving encomium written about Orwell by his BBC head of department after his service there. The volume concludes with a fearless account of the painful illness that took Orwell’s life at age forty-seven. His last letter concerns his son and his estate and closes with the words, “Beyond that I can’t make plans at present.”

Meticulously edited and fully annotated by Peter Davison, the world’s preeminent Orwell scholar, the volume presents Orwell “in all his varieties” and his relationships with those most close to him, especially his first wife, Eileen. Combined with rare photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, George Orwell: A Life in Letters offers “everything a reader new to Orwell needs to know ... and a great deal that diehard fans will be enchanted to have” (New Statesman).

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About the Author: George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950) wrote fiction, journalism, criticism, and poetry. His nine books include the classics Animal Farm and 1984.

Peter Davison edited the twenty volumes of Orwell’s Complete Works (with Ian Angus and Sheila Davison).

Making the decision to adopt a child is one of the most important decisions you can make. Understanding the adoption process is a big key to setting your expectations and ensuring that you can make the decision to adopt, or not to adopt, based on facts. When you understand the adoption process, you will feel confident that your dream of becoming a parent will come true. Getting Acquainted With the Adoption Process was written to have you be informed about the adoption process so that you will be able to navigate with ease through all of the nuances associated with adoption. First you need to understand the adoption process. Then, you need to understand all of the terms used by adoption professionals. Lastly, you need to be aware of the costs involved. You get all of this information and more in Getting Acquainted With The Adoption Process. Wouldn’t you like to adopt a child while dodging most of the bureaucratic headache and getting your child faster than you ever thought possible? Adopting a child is one of the noblest things someone can do It takes a special type of person to adopt a child. The act of pouring yourself out into a child is a selfless one. Pouring yourself into a child that isn’t your own is even more so. More and more children need parents everyday. And more and more couples are looking to adopt. But many people just don’t know how the process works, much less how to succeed within it. That is why this book was written.

From the Publisher: This book reads as easily as a suspense novel, yet it provides a realistic glimpse into the difficult process of adoption and surrogacy for all prospective parents. It is true story of a long-time loving couple whose lives are rich and full except for having a family of their own. Getting Simon follows their trials and tribulations in trying to become fathers. They are determined to be parents in spite of dead-end leads, conflicting medical and legal advice, disappearing birth mothers, failed adoptions, unreliable surrogates, and, of course, prejudice. This book has been nominated for an American Library Association award.

From the Dust Jacket: In 1970 Doug and Gloria Bates adopted a four-year-old black girl as a sister to their two biological white sons. Two years later they adopted another black girl. Gift Children is the story of the twenty-three-year interracial journey that ensued, a story that helps illuminate race relations in America today while depicting both the harsh difficulties as well as the heartwarming rewards that followed.

Gift Children is an intimate portrait of race relations told through the history of the Bates family. It is a deeply American story about bringing up children (in this case, in Eugene, Oregon), about celebrating and growing together, about coping with family tensions and dilemmas, and about negotiating the difficult years of adolescence and young adulthood. While casting a sharp light on the racism that lies all about us—and often within us as well—it is preeminently a book about caring, trusting, loving, and working together. Gift Children describes the problems, setbacks, and pain of a family’s attempt to live interracially, but ultimately it tells of a signal success hard won in an imperfect world. All who are interested in families, adoption, and race relations in America will find Gift Children an important and moving book.

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About the Author: J. Douglas Bates was managing editor of the Register Guard in Eugene, Oregon, and general news editor of the Seattle Times. The author of The Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Bates lives with his wife in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and is at work on his next book.

From the Back Cover: An adopted Chinese girl reaches the magical age of sixteen. On the morning of her Sweet 16 birthday party, her father places a DVD in her hands and says, “This is a movie I produced years ago. It’s the story of how you became my daughter. Happy birthday.” Can you imagine the range of emotions she would feel as she stares at her baby photo on the DVD cover of this gift? A Gift for Lila Rose is the heart-warming memoir of a China adoption and the unlikely success of the movie it inspired. Its message of love and miracles is a triumph of the human spirit and a testament to the power of faith.

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About the Author: Fred Ford is an award-winning comic, filmmaker, and certified consultant with Bob Proctor’s Life Success company. This is Fred’s first book. He lives in Bellport, New York, with his wife, Dorothy, and daughter, Lila Rose.

Like every little girl, Sue dreamed of her handsome prince, a couple cute kids and a life of happily ever after. She was sure she would get it too because she is a very determined woman. But God had other plans for her. It took a while for Sue to accept them but once she did, she found that life has a way of making dreams come true after all. This is a true story of our adoption experience. The names of all parties have been changed to protect them. Adoption is not an easy process, and may feel difficult and even unfair at times, but the outcome is worth it. I hope you find at least one nugget of help or encouragement in the pages of this book.

Adoption is almost as old and natural as childbirth itself. It is an incredible journey and one that has all the possibilities, risks, fears, wonder and fulfillment that any birth can have. But often the fears outweigh the promise for some couples who contemplate adoption. This may especially be true for fathers who have to “buy-in” to this method of parenthood. Is there a special anxiety that goes into a potential adoptive father’s thoughts? This is the story of adoption from a father’s perspective. One who had his doubts—not about adoption—but of himself and parenting. As this father sorts through his feelings, he does so amidst a very foreign background... Kazakhstan. Not the land of Borat but of the open land that served as the highway between East and West for centuries. This is how one adoption story turned out and how the father struggled with his own thoughts and doubts and where he arrived after the journey.

From the Publisher: Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room to make sure she was getting up for school and found her room dark and “neater than usual.” Casey was gone but he found a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry.

Several hours later a security video was found that showed Casey stepping off the bridge.

Brooks spent months after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey’s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for the first fourteen months of her life, to her adoption and life with John and his wife Erika in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey’s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers.

In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks shares what he learned and asks, “What did everyone miss? What could have been done differently?” He’d come to realize that Casey might have been helped if someone had recognized that she’d likely suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy—an affliction common among children who’ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. This emotional deprivation in early childhood, from the lack of a secure attachment to a primary caregiver, can lead to a wide range of serious behavioral issues later in life.

John’s hope is that Casey’s story, and what he discovered since her death, will help others. This important book is a wakeup call that parents, mental health professionals, and teens should read.

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About the Author: John Brooks was a senior financial executive in the media industry until tragedy struck. Since his daughter’s death, he has turned to writing, mental health activism, speaking and volunteering with teenagers in Marin County, California. He has been featured on the Dr. Phil Show, NPR-affiliate, KQED-FM, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Marin Independent Journal. Casey’s story has also appeared in San Francisco Magazine.

From the Back Cover: Approaching her daughter’s high school graduation, Susan Emmerich told friends she was eager to begin a new chapter in her life. She envisioned more time, more freedom and more gas in her car. After 18 years of parenting, Ms. Emmerich was excited at the prospect of being able to put her own needs first. She lied.

Recently divorced, coping with her father’s illness and dealing with ever fluctuating mid-life hormones, the author did two things: bought a bike and picked up a pen. Through riding and writing, she found her voice and retained her spirit.

Sometimes serious, other times humorous, Ms. Emmerich invites the reader to ride along on a journey that includes adjusting to an empty nest, aging parents, divorce and again seeking love. This collection of essays encourages everyone to recognize their inner voice and follow where it leads.

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About the Author: Susan Emmerich currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio, and works as a high school guidance counselor. Formerly a clinical social worker, she found herself drawn to writing late in life, motivated by the creative outlet for the emotions created by ever-shifting hormones and life transitions. She lives with her daughter and is an avid long distance bike rider.

It takes three years for an adopted child to be able to start “giving” back to you. An emotionally injured child is unable to function in a healthy manner. But if you allow him to have the time to go through the stages of emotional development that a healthy infant gets, he will both heal and be able to flourish. This book is produced by Conquered By Love Ministries. Authors Imran and Tami Razvi are the parents of 11 children (4 birth children and 7 adopted children). In their dozens of parenting books they teach the unique, practical parenting techniques which make their family so unified. Their adoption books share the skills for healing traumatized children that have helped their family overcome seemingly impossible challenges.

Giving the Baby Back documents one young woman’s single-minded pursuit of motherhood, and the relationships and opportunities that developed along the way. A personal, sometimes anguishing reflection on decisions made, risks taken, and how it feels to raise another woman’s child. From the dusty streets of Puerto Rico to the shiny fertility clinics of Boston, and ending at a nondescript courthouse in Hawaii, this story explores the many ways it is possible to become a parent, and the determination and patience sometimes required to succeed.

From the Back Cover: After reading a magazine article about China, Gladys Aylward couldn’t put the idea out of her mind. But when the China Inland Mission rejected her as a missionary, Aylward found her own way there in 1932, trusting God with every step.

Her simple dependence on God would be a recurring theme during her amazing tenure in China, a mission which lasted, with one ten-year interruption during the Communist takeover, until her death in 1970. Enduring threats on her life and the perils of war and disease, Aylward lived an adventure for Jesus Christ that is one of the great missionary stories of the twentieth century.

Like Corrie ten Boom, Gladys Aylward praised God that, in her own words, “one so insignificant, uneducated, and ordinary in every way could be used to His glory for the blessing of His people in poor persecuted China.”

Parenting is a tough job. Adoptive parenting adds an additional layer of complexity. Throw into the mix special needs and multiply by twelve, and you begin to get an idea of the challenge that Claudia and her husband Bart have encountered in parenting twelve children, born between 1986 and 1998. Their children provide them with great joy and continual opportunities to deepen their lives. Using humor and Scripture, Claudia tells the story of how God is using their children to bring about change in her life. As a committed parent, Claudia sought to change her children, but instead God used those years to transform herself. Whether you are a parent or you have one, Claudia invites you to discover how the task of being a mom or dad points us straight to God’s heart. Nothing shows us more of who God is than the way He patiently parents His children. Look into God’s heart. Explore unconditional love, everlasting peace, infinite wisdom, abundant joy and amazing grace. About the Author: Claudia Fletcher and her husband are the adoptive parents of 12 children, 10 adopted from the U.S. foster care system and two from a Guatemalan orphanage. Claudia is a former college administrator who now divides her time between various adoption-related jobs, being a clergy spouse, parenting her kids, and enjoying her grandchildren.

In 1975, Byron and Lana Noone adopted their daughter, Heather, who tragically died, and then their daughter, Jennie, from the Vietnam Babylift. Four years later, they adopted their son, Jason, from Korea. Addressing topics that range from separation anxiety, racism and culture, to elementary school, teen, and college years, the Noone family combines faith, insight, and humor to tell their story. The book’s message is one of hope. “We were a ‘pioneer’ adoptive family, living in suburbia. We raised our children when there were no adoption camps, few role models, and many societal challenges. We thrived, and so will you,” Mrs. Noone says. The story of their journey will inspire and encourage all families ... a “must-read” for adoptive and birth families everywhere.

From the Publisher: God’s call to care for the orphaned and vulnerable children of the world is not easy or comfortable. And it will require willingness, commitment and sacrifice. The more you know about the global orphan crisis the more your heart will break and it will cause you to want to do something... anything... to make the life of an orphaned child a little easier.

The need is overwhelming, but if you are willing, you can be part of the global orphan solution. It is a decision that will change your life forever. The journey will be worth the effort in countless blessings along the way. Together, with God’s strength, you can be the hands and feet of Christ and make a difference in the life of an orphaned child now and for all eternity.

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About the Author: Diane Lynn Elliot is an author, professional photographer, and business administrator. She has a heart for people and a passion for ministry, specifically with women and children. She has cowritten two youth management books, and has spent many years in the no-for-profit and corporate settings. Diane and her husband, David, live in Wauconda, Illinois.

Through a journey of joys, tears, struggle, and hopelessness, Debra Delulio Jones found herself shaking her fist in the air and screaming, “God, are you nice or mean?” Debra and her husband, Alan, believed they were following God’s will when they adopted Dane from an orphanage in Romania in 1991. Scars of communism left their mark on this infant, and Debra searched for many years for answers for her troubled son. She found some answers, but what she didn’t expect to find was that her relationship with God was much like that of an orphaned child who didn’t really trust her adopted heavenly father. Dane didn’t know how to trust the love of his parents due to his early abandonment and attachment issues. In his confusion he would say, “Mommy, are you nice or mean?” As she learned ways to connect to her son, Debra realized a twenty year course in clinging to God paralleled her parenting journey. She came to understand that her doubts about God were rooted in fear and pain, just like her son’s maladaptive behaviors. As an adoptive mother in the role of healing parent, she gained insight into knowing God as her healer through lessons she learned in her relationship with Dane. In her transparent and humorous way, Debra shares how she went from living as a “spiritual orphan” to a trusting daughter in her daily walk with God.

God’s Grace through a Child: Karolynn’s Story is the true story of a child who, following the death of her father, is left parentless and without hope. From birth until the day she found her father dead in their small home in Texas, Karolynn’s life was filled with turmoil. While she struggled to survive in a world filled with drug abuse and alcoholism, she also faced her own opportunities as a victim of FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). About the Author; Tresa Oldham is the adoptive mother of Karolynn Oldham. She is a Human Resources professional and a business owner.

Christian parents are responsible for disciplining their children. How can godly discipline be used with adopted children? This book discusses spanking from the perspective of adoptive parents. This book is produced by Conquered By Love Ministries. Authors Imran and Tami Razvi are the parents of 11 children (4 birth children and 7 adopted children). In their dozens of parenting books they teach the unique, practical parenting techniques which make their family so unified. Their adoption books share the skills for healing traumatized children that have helped their family overcome seemingly impossible challenges.

From the Dust Jacket: Arty Elgart, founder of Golden Cradle adoption agency, has been the subject of stories in People, New Age and Parade magazines. What prompted this attention is that Elgart is an adoptive father whose own experience made him want to do something to help the thousands of prospective adoptive parents like himself.

When Arty Elgart and his wife faced frustration and barrier after barrier in trying to adopt a child, he concluded, “There has got to be a better way to treat couples and birth parents and babies.” There is. It is Golden Cradle, an adoption agency that Elgart formed when he decided to do adoption better than it was currently being done.

In Golden Cradle: How the Adoption Establishment Works–And How to Make It Work for You, Elgart writes a book that is at once very personal and supportive about adoption. He shares his own stories, and those of others who have been where the readers are in their struggle to have a family and in their decision to adopt. He understands the emotional side of being disappointed by traditional agencies who must turn down more prospective families than they can accept.

Elgart cuts through much of the mystique surrounding adoption and shows how to make the adoption establishment work for people wishing to have a child.

Golden Cradle is a unique organization because it brings adoption out in the open and frequently encourages the birth parents and adoptive parents to meet, get to know one another, and share the birth experience. It helps birth families and childless couples alike decide when adoption is best for them and it educate the community about adoption as a positive option for women facing an unplanned pregnancy.

Golden Cradle: How the Adoption Establishment Works–And How to Make It Work for You reaches beyond the Golden Cradle agency experience to give complete details about what can be expected when adopting a child. It covers information such as: Finding an Agency, Going the Independent Route, Adopting a Child From Another Land, What to Do to Keep From Going Nuts While Waiting, Calling a Halt to Infertility Treatments, and many, many more topics.

This book will appeal to any family—or any individual—interested in adopting a child by offering a step-by-step guide from the moment the decision has been made right up to the time a child is adopted.

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About the Author: Arty Elgart is a nationally known personality who has been written about in magazines and featured on 60 Minutes and other national programs. He is an adoptive and biological father.

Claire Berman is the author of many articles and books, including Making It As a Stepparent, Adult Children of Divorce Speak Out, and What Am I Doing in a Stepfamily? (Lyle Stuart).

This grief book for men was written by a father whose 16-month-old daughter Samantha died unexpectedly. He faced the toughest journey any parent could ever be confronted with; how do you continue to be a parent, husband and friend after the death of a child? “Gone Too Soon” is written for dads and their loved ones. The book describes strategies to deal with grief, and suggests a game plan to persevere. This uplifting story provides hope and courage to everyone who has suffered a loss.

From the Dust Jacket: “Before I was married, I had a romantic notion of the kind of family I would have. There would be two boys and two girls, nicely spaced out—the girls to arrive first. I even knew when I wanted them. That was as soon as possible after I was married.

“When I did get married and the months slipped by with no sign of me becoming pregnant I imagined there had been some kind of slip-up in the predestined order of things. When we had been married one year I took my complaint—and,naively, that’s exactly what it was—to our family doctor. I felt that by that time I should have had a three-month-old baby, so what had gone wrong?

“‘A year is no time at all,’ he told me kindly. ‘Go home and stop thinking so much about it.’

“So I went home and thought about it all the more. The idea that I just wasn’t going to be a mother never entered my head.”

Four of the five times that Christine Brown became a mother, it happened—by telephone! The phone calls were from adoption societies telling her the baby had arrived. Adoption, they say, is the painless way to parenthood, the ultimate in family planning. Christine Brown knows better. In Goodbye Patrick she writes of the last addition to her unusual family.

“In place of the boy called Patrick we’d expected, we were offered a daughter—half Indian, half Chinese. Somehow, that set the seal on the higgledy-piggledy nature of our family...”

In this warm, witty and eyes-wide-open account, she tells of her heart-warming and often hilarious experiences as a “multiple mother.” She answers the questions that all women must wonder about. What is it like being screened by an adoption society? To get a baby out of the blue? To be handed a bundle in an office, containing a week-old baby, spare nappies and feeding instructions? How do your friends and relatives react? What do you do when complete strangers are unthinkingly hurtful? How do you accept the fact that five times some other faceless woman has had the labour pains while you have had nothing but the joy of being handed a new baby? And how do you cope with five children, three boys and two girls, completely different in looks, colouring and temperament, knowing only the sketchiest details of their background?

Every adoption is a small kind of miracle, and for Christine Brown and her husband the miracle has happened five times. Now she is able to write, “Although we look like a disaster from a family planning point of view, we regret none of it. Except, perhaps, Patrick ...”

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About the Author: Christine Brown was born in Edinburgh in 1933, and has worked on local newspapers as a reporter and feature writer in Scotland and England. She lives with her husband, also a journalist, and their five children in Berkshire, where she is now a busy free-lance journalist.

Adoptive parents often wonder why their adopted child continues to be manipulative, defiant and aggressive despite all the love and generosity they have been given. Research shows the power that the infant’s experiences and lack of nurturing have on later development. In Gotcha!: Welcoming Your Child Home, author and psychologist Patti M. Zordich, Ph.D., offers a refreshingly positive and clear explanation of the complex issues contributing to these behavior problems. She then provides guidelines for a simple, loving tool called Cocooning™, Dr. Zordich’s innovative system that helps parents heal these inner wounds, bringing their child to a more peaceful, loving place. About the Author: Patti M. Zordich, Ph.D. has been working in the field of attachment and childhood trauma since 1990 assessing the quality of attachment in young children, providing psychological services to children in the foster care system and internationally adopted children and their families using play therapy, art therapy, sandtray therapy and family therapy, and providing forensic attachment evaluations as an expert witness. As a consultant she provides trainings for groups and individuals on therapeutic interventions for children and families with early relational trauma. Dr. Patti Zordich is a licensed psychologist in Cary, NC. She is Director of Triangle Psychological Services, a psychology group with a mission to integrate psychology and faith, which she founded in 2008. Dr. Zordich was born and raised in Pittsburgh and is the youngest of seven children. She relocated to North Carolina with her husband and their son in 2006.

From the Dust Jacket: Gracie Allen, of course—as told with love and humor by George Burns. “For forty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.” Her name was Gracie Allen, but she was on first-name basis with America. There was only one Gracie, and this is the story of her life, as told by the only person who could, George Burns.

Gracie brings to life the charming woman who was smart enough to become the dumbest woman in show business history. Onstage she was lovable, confusing Gracie, who believed horses must be deaf because she saw so few of them at concerts, and who decided to cut her vacuum cleaner cord in half so she could save on electricity; Gracie, who pleaded with audiences, “If I say the right thing, please forgive me.”

Offstage she was a devoted wife, the loving mother of two adopted children—and throughout her career in vaudeville‚ radio, television, and the movies she managed to hide the fact that her left arm had been horribly scarred in a childhood accident and that she suffered from crippling migraine headaches. Offstage, George explains, she was nothing like the dizzy character she played, “except maybe for the time she backed up into a parked car and managed to convince the driver of that car that he’d hit her.”

George Burns has written five previous bestsellers, but Gracie is the story he has never told before. It is the story of a woman who made America laugh forty years, and who selected the sickest child in the orphanage as her own. It is the story of the woman who ran for president in 1940 on the Surprise Party ticket, garnering 50,000 votes, but who could be as tough as any woman alive. Gracie is a story that will make readers laugh and cry. It is the story of a romance so strong it has endured almost twenty-five years after her death. “I go to Forest Lawn Cemetery once a month to see her,” George reveals, “and I tell her everything that’s going on. I told her 1 was writing this book about her. Evidently she approves—she didn’t say anything.

I don’t know if she hears me, but I do know that every time I talk to her, I feel better.”

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About the Author: The incredible George Burns, America’s most loved nonagenarian, is still one of the country’s greatest stars of motion pictures, television, concerts, and recordings.

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By the Same Author: I Lover Her, That’s Why!: An Autobiography (1955, Simon & Schuster).

The grafting process is a great symbol of what takes place with adoption. Adoption is the opportunity to provide a child, who has been severed from a biological family, with the elements needed to grow and fulfill the purpose for which he or she was created. As a child is grafted into a forever family, the opportunity for a renewed life is given.

Grandparents Adopting Their Grandchildren is a story of one woman’s struggle to get her daughter to stop doing drugs and be a mother to her son. More and more grandparents are raising their grandchildren. Should grandparents refuse to raise their grandchildren, or should they do what they feel that they need to do to protect their grandchildren? There’s circumstances when a young parent, or parents cannot raise their child, or children. But what does a grandparent do when their grown child is not fit to be a parent?

From the Dust Jacket (Second edition): If you’re among the millions of grandparents raising grandchildren today, you need information and support you can count on to keep your family strong. You need practical advice on the realities of parenting the second time around, plus pointers for managing crises and difficult family situations. This is the book for you.

Like most parents, you probably looked forward to spoiling and coddling your grandkids—then sending them back to their mom and dad at the end of the day. But life doesn’t always work out that way. Now you find yourself back in a routine of bottles, diapers, and PTA meetings, with all the responsibilities of raising another set of children. What can you do to protect and nurture vulnerable grandkids whose lives have been turned upside down? How can you balance your own needs with those of your family? Offering informed, compassionate guidance, this book helps you:

• Ease your grandkids’ adjustment to their new home.

• Understand the effects of child abuse and neglect.

• Manage common behavioral problems.

• Cope with a whole new set of daily stresses.

• Set boundaries with troubled adult children.

• Meet the special needs of drug-exposed kids.

• Navigate the maze of government aid, court proceedings, and special education.

• Find or form grandparent support groups.

Wise, honest, moving stories show how numerous other grandparents are coping and surviving in their new roles. There are no easy answers to the challenges you face, but this book offers hope. You can give your grandchildren a brighter future—and enjoy the rewards of seeing them grow and thrive.

Updated throughout, and reflecting current laws and policies affecting families, the second edition features new discussions of kids’ technology use and other timely issues.

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About the Author: Sylvie de Toledo, LCSW, BCD, is Founder and Clinical Director of Grandparents As Parents, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, California, and is a recognized expert on issues affecting grandparents and other relative caregivers. She has received awards and other honors from organizations including the Alliance for Children’s Rights, the Southern California Psychiatric Society, the United States Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, and the California Coalition of Relative Caregivers. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughters.

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning journalist and poet based in Los Angeles. She was a long-time reporter for Time magazine and has written for numerous other publications, including Psychiatric Times.

Exploring the complicated choices grandparents, specifically grandmothers, make in regards to the permanent care of their grandchildren when the parents are unable to do the job, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren offers a great deal of insight into a common, but generally under-represented, situation. The study, in particular, was designed to examine the grandmothers’ thoughts and feelings about their relationships with their substance-abusing adult children. Additionally, the knowledge gained from these relationships was used to try to understand why these grandmothers take on the responsibility of caring for their grandchildren when their life plans may not have included this care-taking function at this current age or stage. Using real interviews and careful consideration of recent legislation, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren serves to educate all readers but will hold a greater appeal and effect with readers who are struggling through the situations and scenarios discussed in this text. Additionally, the text exposes a great deal of information that most family members are not offered when forced to make these tough, life-changing decisions that affect many generations.

In Graves in My Womb, Hlengiwe shares her emotional journey towards adoption. She carefully articulates how that process proved to be the only rare antidote to her previous struggles and losses concerning conception. Adoption of a child outside the family although not common in South Africa saved her life. The adoption of her twins mended her broken heart, restored her faith and prepared her to be an advocate for women affected by infertility and children waiting to be adopted. Infertility and adoption are widely acknowledged in developed countries, Africa has its own mix of challenges caused by various aspects such as culture and economics. This book encourages people to take care of the affected and awakens the reader to another perspective on adoption and infertile women. The book is about hope—not only for the woman or her partner but also the child that finds the warmth of loving parents.

Drenched in the sweltering Vietnamese August heat, we approached the Immigration Police. Day after day, my husband and I made the same trek hoping to acquire the necessary signature to bring our daughter home; yet again we were evasively sent away and told to return the next day. Should we return tomorrow with a bribe? And if so, how much money would result in a signature? Already we had endured two years of paperwork, stalling, impatience and exhaustion in an attempt to adopt Minh Tuyen. Now, the wait and frustration seemed part of a never-ending, cruel game. Parents begin the adoption journey with great expectations that their longing for a child will quickly result in a peacefully united family. Yet often, the eager expectations are replaced with doubts, fears and indescribable restlessness. The submittal of extensive paperwork and the hassles required to compile an adoption dossier can seem overwhelming, but the largest challenge to adoptive parents remains the wait for a child. Unlike biological parents who can feel or see the physical changes brought on by a growing pregnancy, adoptive parents have little tangible proof that their labors will bring them a child. How do parents relax, let go, acquire patience and lean on God? This book will embolden and hearten adoptive parents to rejoice always and pray continuously throughout the anxious wait of adoption.