This is a great little book if you plan on adopting in Colorado. It covers the basic legal process for all different kinds of adoption.

From the Publisher: Most people entering the profession of foster parenting become quickly disillusioned when they realize that parenting children is only half of their job descriptions. The other half is survival in the foster care system itself! There is plenty of training available for parenting difficult children, but no one prepares foster parents for what comes along with their foster children, namely, a whole entourage known as the foster care treatment team! Foster parents require much more than parenting skills to achieve success and longevity in today’s foster care world. The goal of this book is to help foster parents improve the climates where they live and work, which in turn enables them to be available for needy children for the long run. Foster care agencies experience huge turnovers in foster parents. That is because the majority of people entering this field have altruistic motives to help children succeed without possessing the knowledge they need to survive on the foster care treatment team. Foster parents most begin to see themselves as equal professional member of their children’s treatment teams. Living with foster children 24 hours a day, seven days a week makes the foster parents the highest level of experts about those children. The problem is that they are not recognized as experts by the other members of the team! This book will help foster parents take a more aggressive approach to educate themselves about the inner workings of the foster care system and be able to make better sense of why the other players on the team do what they do. The author’s insight as an adoptive and foster parent, and also as a foster care social worker provides information to the reader from both prospective. It is a must read for all foster and adoptive parents and social workers!

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About the Author: Mary Goodearle and her husband of 37 years, Allen, live in Mena, AR, on a mini-ranch with their three adopted boys, the youngest of their nine children. Mary earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from CA State University-Sacramento, and her Master’s degree in Human Services and Public Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She is a former child-protection social worker and foster care program coordinator for Outagamie County DHHS in Appleton Wisconsin. She also worked for the State of Wisconsin as an adoption facilitator. Mary and Allen have been foster parents to over 40 children with special needs. Today they work together presenting training seminars to foster parents all over the country.

From the Publisher: Let those who’ve “been there” provide you with wisdom and insight on living and thriving—as an interfaith couple or family.

Issues such as which holidays to observe and how, locating an officiant for a wedding, or celebrating the birth of a child take on additional meaning, and potentially more divisiveness, when one partner is Jewish and the other is of a different religious tradition.

The Guide to Jewish Interfaith Family Life is the first-of-its-kind resource where Jewish and non-Jewish members of interfaith families as well as the professionals who work with them offer their own personal experience and advice on these issues. It is for:

• Interfaith couples.

• Interdating couples.

• Parents and relatives of interfaith couples.

• Children of interfaith parents.

• Jews-by-Choice who have non-Jewish relatives.

• Jewish and non-Jewish relatives of Jews-by-Choice.

• Jewish and non-Jewish friends who want to better understand interfaith couples and Jews-by-Choice.

• Jewish or interfaith couples who have adopted a non-Jewish child.

• Professionals and lay leaders in the Jewish or any other faith community who work with interfaith couples or Jews-by-Choice.

• Members of the Jewish or any other faith community who are concerned about interfaith marriage and who want to better understand interfaith families and choices made by interfaith couples.

If you, a loved one, or a friend are directly involved in an interfaith relationship, or if you counsel those in interfaith relationships, this essential guide will help answer your questions and ease your concerns.

An ideal gift and family reference, this book offers practical support for families who are exploring Jewish life while respecting the heritage and traditions of those they love.

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About the Author: Ronnie Friedland has more than twenty years of experience in a Jewish interfaith family as a mother, wife, and daughter-in-law. She is editor of the award-winning website InterfaithFamily.com and co-editor of two parenting books, The Mothers’ Book (Houghton Mifflin) and The Fathers’ Book (Hall).

Edmund Case also has more than twenty years of experience in a Jewish interfaith family as father, husband, and son-in-law. He is publisher of InterfaithFamily.com and holds a degree in Jewish communal service from Brandeis University’s Hornstein Program. Actively involved in Reform Jewish outreach, he is author of numerous articles that advocate for welcoming interfaith families into the Jewish community.

Marlyn Kress began her adoption journey as a young woman contemplating her future family. In May 1994, as a single parent by choice, she adopted an eight-week-old baby girl from China. Marlyn is the national membership chair for Stars of David International, a support group for Jewish adoptive families, and co-directs Stars of David Chaverim in the Southern New Jersey/Philadelphia area.

Cheryl A. Lieberman, Ph.D., is founder and president of Cornerstone Consulting Group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is co-author of Creating Ceremonies: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges.

Rabbi Susan Silverman is co-author of Jewish Family & Life (Golden Books). She is currently serving the Multiracial Jewish Network, teaching at the Brandeis University Hillel, and working on a book on the spiritual journey of international adoption. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children.

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Compiler’s Note: See Chapter 13: Creating Jewish Adoptive Families: “With Chai You Get Eggroll: Raising a Jewish-Chinese Daughter in America” by Marlyn Kress; “On Adopting Children from a Different Religion and Culture” by Cheryl A. Lieberman; and “Our Son’s Conversion to Judaism” by Susan Silverman.

From the Dust Jacket: Foster parents need wisdom to guide foster children and to enable both parents and children to have a meaningful experience. This book, written by a pediatrician, provides guidance and suggestions to maximize the experience for foster families and assist them in the process.

Written with the help of many foster parents, this book contains practical suggestions for those who care for foster children. Dr. Blatt addresses many of the major and minor problems that may arise in foster care. This book contains easily understood discussions of those problems with practical suggestions for resolving them, including when to call in a professional. Although various trends in child welfare are discussed, it is important to note that this book does not aim at criticizing the system, but rather focuses on the needs of the children going through the system. A Guidebook for Raising Foster Children is an indispensable resource for anyone involved with the foster care system and particularly families raising foster children.

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About the Author: Susan McNair Blatt, M.D. is the Medical Director of the House of Good Shepherd in Utica, New York, a child welfare agency, and is an Adjunct Professor at Utica College.

When the author takes a day trip to Tijuana, he’s just after a couple stiff drinks and an escape from the rigors of being a front man for a international billion-dollar computer company. What he finds instead is a run-down orphanage full of malnourished, haunted children and the ardent Madres who watch over them. At the Casa, the orphans have bags under their eyes and harbor strange secrets. They keep their eyes glued to the floor and they cling to the stucco corners of the compound, shying away from visitors despite their eagerness to explore anything connected with the outside world. Into this hive stumbles Bob, with the lone goal of testing out his fancy American computers on the Spanish-speaking children. But he soon loses his focus when he meets Guillermina, a sickly yet precocious eight-year-old whose genuine smile wins his cold, tired heart almost immediately. But as Guillermina’s English skills improve, so does her ability to reveal the nuns’ secrets, secrets which threaten the core of Mexican society and Catholic rule. While the author and Guillermina attempt to forge a happy path to adoption, details about the Casa begin to surface from their quiet depths, and the pair soon fears for their lives. Guillermina and the Rose is a true story of a relationship formed in the midst of chaos and corruption. Despite the problems that besiege them and the trials they must face, the author and Guillermina never doubt their love and need for each other, and their faith is a testament to what is possible when we hold tight to hope and have faith. All is completed when a rose is presented to Guillermina in a crowd from a child that no one sees but her and her new father. Yet, Guillermina holds a rose from out of nowhere.

From the Publisher: How does one go about opening one’s heart to an abused six-year-old boy who speaks not one word of English? What do menopause and kudzu have in common? Where do we turn for that extra dose of courage, or an extra dollop of humor to help us through the day? Gweilo Moments, a collection of interlocking essays by Robin Minietta, is a thoughtful—and, provocative—meditation on lives that unfold against the backdrop of Hong Kong. Both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, Minietta’s debut book showcases a strong, clear intelligent woman’s voice. About the Author: Robin Minietta, a journalist by training, worked for over a decade as a reporter and producer for public television in the United States. She has won numerous awards for her broadcast work, including an Emmy. Her essays have been published in literary and academic journals in the U.S. Minietta lives in Hong Kong with her husband and three children.

“This book is a story of a mother and a child who were both abused and found love in the middle of a struggle to become whole.” When I decided to write this book, I promised myself that I would be honest, even if it would mean that others would view me differently or disagree with me. I am entitled to express the voice of circumstance and changes that have occurred in my life, and I have chosen to do so by writing. About the Author: C.R.E. Gonzalez was born in Virginia and currently resides in Connecticut. She started a nonprofit organization for children in 2003 and travels internationally to support abused, neglected, and poverty-stricken children. She is the oldest of seven girls and is happily married with three children.

Now in its sixth edition, The Handbook for Single Adoptive Parents provides much needed information of particular interest to single adopters. The book is divided into six sections: the mechanics of adoption, managing single parenthood, coping with challenges, personal adoption experiences, frequently asked questions, and studies by professional social scientists showing the success of single parent adoption.

From the Back Cover: Since 1986, nearly 200,000 children from other countries have been adopted by American parents. Every indication suggests that this number will increase in the years to come. Many of these children arrive in the United States with developmental delays and complex medical and behavioral problems. These children require specialized medical attention to help them adjust to their new lives and surroundings.

The Handbook of International Adoption Medicine: A Guide for Physicians, Parents, and Providers presents an overview of the medical and developmental issues that affect internationally adopted children, offering guidelines for families and physicians before, during, and after adoption. Laurie Miller has comprehensively researched these topics and also draws from over fifteen years of experience in international adoption and orphanages throughout the world. This book shows how to advise families prior to an international adoption, how to perform an effective initial screening assessment of the newly arrived child, how to manage common behavior problems, and how to recognize and manage developmental and other more long term problems as they emerge. Sections cover such subjects as the risks of prenatal exposures. growth and developmental delays, infectious diseases, and other medical conditions such as toxic exposures, uncertain age, and precocious puberty. This information has never been available in one place. making the book an invaluable resource for families and professionals in the field of international adoption.

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About the Author: Laurie C. Miller, M.D., is Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the International Adoption Clinic, The Floating Hospital for Children, New England Medical Center.

From the Back Cover: For all parents who have expanded their families through adoption—or are considering it—this book is designed to equip you for success!

Adoptive parents and counselors alike have collaborated in writing Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family—an easy-to-use resource that provides time-tested wisdom, real-life solutions, biblical guidance, and creative ideas relating to life and parenting after adopting a child. You’ll read personal stories from parents who know firsthand the emotional, social, and spiritual challenges that adoptive families face.

This book has the insights you need to know on vital issues such as:

• attachment and bonding

• sibling and extended family relationships

• past abuse

• nurture and discipline

• developing a support network

Be prepared to meet the unique needs of both your new child and your entire family. You can thrive as an adoptive family!

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About the Author: David and Renée Sanford own Sanford Communications, Inc., which works closely with leading authors, ministries, and publishers to develop life-changing books and other resources. Their professional credentials, life experience, and passion for helping adoptive families well qualify them for this project. David and Renée were trained and served as foster parents to two sisters in 1996. They were then trained as adoptive parents in 2002 and adopted their daughter Annalise through the Oregon State Child Welfare system in 2004.

The couple has been married 26 years and live with the two youngest of their five children “on the road to Damascus” a few miles from downtown Portland, Oregon. They also have two grandchildren.

From the Dust Jacket: This is a story of courage in the face of pain, of poverty, of fear. It is the story of a brave man who learned that a handicap race was one in which you “ran and ran until you couldn’t possibly go any further, and then ... kept running some more.”

Roger Arnett’s life started under a handicap. His family was desperately poor, and it required great sacrifice from his family and him for Roger to go to college in 1929. At Michigan State Normal College, he became a record-breaking champion as a track runner. And then in 1931, on the way to a meet, Roger’s car overturned in a snowstorm. When he regained consciousness he learned that the lower part of his body would be paralyzed forever.

So began Roger Arnett’s real handicap race, the one he must run for the rest of his days. Paralysis itself became a relatively minor problem. Roger soon found ways in which he could get around and do most of the things other people could. But in the thirties little was known about paraplegia, and Roger began an endless battle with infection and other ailments resulting from his condition.

Nevertheless he married LaVerna, a wonderful, very special young woman who had been handicapped by polio. Together they built a dedicated life in which they found room for the adoption of three children.

Roger did not stop at making his family life complete. He embarked on the task of cultivating and cross-breeding gladioli and succeeded in developing several new prize-winning varieties.

Not content with his own accomplishments, he enlisted in a crusade to bring hope and assistance to the physically disabled. He became a minister in order to serve them better, and for many years has carried on a unique visitation program in hospitals and nursing homes. An active promoter of the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, he has served as one of its national vice-presidents.

Roger and LaVerna’s story is one of inspiring faith and love. Here the handicapped will find encouragement, and the non-handicapped the urge to help.

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About the Author: Dorothy Clarke Wilson has written six novels, among them Prince of Egypt which won the Westminster Fiction Award in 1949, and has had over seventy inspirational plays in print. In 1949 and 1957 Mrs. Wilson visited India to gather material for her well-known biography of Dr. Ida Scudder, Dr. Ida. It is in India too that Mrs. Wilson found the subjects of her two other biographies of missionaries: Take My Hands, and Ten Fingers for God. Mrs. Wilson and her husband, a retired Methodist minister, live in Orono, Maine.

From the Dust Jacket: Few people become true American legends, beloved and admired by many millions of people, but Roy Rogers and Dale Evans have achieved that rare and special status. They were top box-office attractions in dozens of movies from 1938 to 1951 and stars of their own TV show into the 1960s. Their fame continues even today.

Here at last is the definitive story of these two living legends and the remarkable lives they have led, both in and out of the spotlight, from Roy’s career as a singing and yodeling cowboy with his band the Sons of the Pioneers, to movie-star status almost from his first film in 1938, to his marriage to his leading lady, Dale Evans—a singer and dancer who initially had no intention of becoming a Western movie actress, but when she teamed with Rogers, the public responded, and soon on-screen romance became a real-life marriage.

But while on screen in both movies and television their stories all had happy endings, off screen their lives have been a series of incredible highs and devastating lows: One child born with Down syndrome died a few days before her second birthday; a Korean orphan, who was one of four multicultural kids they adopted, was killed in a bus crash at age twelve; an abused boy they opened their hearts to died while in the army.

Whether in good times or tough times, however, the King of the Cowboys and his Western Queen have remained enduring symbols of an America brimming with promise and hope, and of a time when the good guys always wore white hats. Modern Nashville royalty, including country singing stars Clint Black and Randy Travis, idolize Roy and Dale. And in 1991, in recognition of their contribution to country music, twelve current country stars joined in duets with Roy on an album called Tribute, which climaxed with everyone singing Roy and Dale’s theme song, “Happy Trails.”

And in numbers rivaling the visitors to Elvis’s Graceland, fans from all over the world flock to the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in California to view firsthand their personal and professional memorabilia (including, of course, the golden palomino Trigger, preserved for all time rearing up on his hind legs and wearing a gleaming silver saddle).

The story of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and of their fifty-year love affair, is a tonic for all who long for heroes, in real life as well as on the screen.

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About the Author: Jane and Michael Stern have written bestselling books on aspects of Americana. They live in Connecticut.

From the Dust Jacket: Happy Trails is not just another Hollywood nostalgia book, although it abounds with anecdotes from two of show business’s most successful careers. It is not a sermon, although it carries a strong Christian witness. Happy Trails is the deeply personal story of a man and woman whose off-screen lives have been every bit as exciting and interesting as those they portrayed on movies, radio, and television—a couple who has supplied three generations with examples of talent. integrity, and faith.

In Parts I and II of Happy Trails, Roy and Dale remember their childhoods and early careers: with humor and candor they tell how Leonard Slye and Frances Smith came to be “King of the Cowboys” and “Queen of the West.” Then, in Part III, they chronicle their years as partners—the growth of their large an active family, their long and satisfying careers.

Lively accounts of their well-known co-stars—the inimitable Gabby Hayes, Trigger, “the smartest horse in the movies”; Pat Brady; Bullet; the Sons of the Pioneers—fill the pages of Happy Trails. And sixteen pages of photographs visually trace their lives and careers from the earliest movies to the present day.

It has not always been “happy trails” for Roy and Dale. Like any family, the Rogerses have had their share of heartache, and they are honest about the troubled times in their lives. But a growing and vital faith in Christ has helped them accept hard times with love for each other and gratitude for the gift of life. That faith shines through in the pages of this book.

Happy Trails is a delight to read—warm, human, and believable. Filled to overflowing with the wholesome good spirit that has made Roy Rogers and Dale Evans heroes to millions of people, Happy Trails is a real treat for fans of all ages.

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About the Author: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans—“King of the Cowboys” and “Queen of the West.” Two generations of buckaroos have grown up on their movies and radio and T.V. programs, have worn Roy Rogers cowboy hats and toted Dale Evans lunch boxes. Millions have seen them perform at state fairs and rodeos, have followed their humanitarian activities and heard their Christian witness.

Much has been written about them in magazines, newspapers, and books. But here, for the first time, is their complete story—told as they see it and in their own words.

Carlton Stowers writes a regular column for the Dallas Morning News and is assigned to cover the Dallas Cowboys football team. He has written for such publications as Sports Illustrated, TV Guide, Good Housekeeping, Golf Digest, and People Weekly. Book credits include Spirit, Where the Rainbows Wait, and The Overcomers.

From the Publisher: Christmas 1997 was the last straw. Linda Simran Harvey went home and wrote “Four Drunks and a Dog.” She felt better afterwards, so gradually she wrote about twenty-six more Christmases. The result is a modern Christmas memoir spanning fifty years, from a magical moment in a sad childhood to middle-aged angst, from a Christmas Eve wedding where the guests have misgivings to the gift of peace between two former spouses. In a class by itself is the memory of a perfect Christmas in February. Unfolding throughout the years is a spiritual journey and a saga of adoption loss and reunion, refusing to be neatly resolved. Nor do other relationships always sort themselves out in tidy packets. This is a real life. But along with the failures of Christmas expectations are love and connection with the human and the divine, just not in the perfect way of holiday specials and other people’s annual Christmas letters.

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About the Author: Linda Simran Harvey temporarily lives in Takoma Park, MD, looking forward to the Spring 2002 wedding of her only daughter to a wonderful guy. Alaska, the red rock of the Southwest, and Ann Arbor, MI, continue to call her home from the appalling local congestion (both traffic and allergens). Meanwhile, she enjoys blues jam sessions, marble monuments, art galleries and the opera in Washington, DC, and deeply appreciates the local spiritual community. Simran is an adoption reform activist, currently doing research for a book on how siblings are impacted by adoption. If you are an adoptee, birth or adoptive sibling, please contact her if you are interested in sharing your experiences (include email address for reply).

From the Back Cover: Hard to Place is a memoir about a family. Loss is the catalyst that sets all the action of the book in motion—but this is not a book about loss. It is a narrative that weaves together the lives of seven people—five original members of a family and the two “hard to place” adopted children who eventually became part of it. It braids together themes of risk, conflict, crisis, spirituality, transcendence, and the many manifestations of love. As the adopted boys move into adulthood, the whole family joins in their quest to uncover and confront painful secrets about the past. After an almost miraculous convergence of events, exciting as a mystery story, the family is almost torn apart by what is discovered.

Weaving these strands together is the mother and narrator, whose personal odyssey of faith and doubt climaxes in conflicted emotions. The title Hard to Place reverberates within the many layers of this story about ordinary people, human experience, and the triumph of will over circumstance.

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About the Author: Marion Goldstein is a psychotherapist who lives in Montclair, New Jersey. She is a registered poetry therapist and an adjunct professor at Caldwell College, where she teaches a course on Poetry Therapy.

From the Dust Jacket: “The time has come for me to get my kite flying, stretch out in the sun, kick off my shoes, and, at long last, SPEAK... .”

And so, with these words, the famous silent Marx Brother breaks his vow—and speaks!

Only once before has Harpo spoken—that was in 1920, in his early vaudeville days. Then he uttered a single word before an audience of one. Now he tells the whole, amazing story of his career as the world’s best-loved—though not necessarily best-tuned—harpist.

In a wonderfully complete autobiography, Harpo speaks up about:

• His longstanding friendship with Alexander Woollcott, and his introduction to the Algonquin Round Table—where he listened while Herold Ross, Dorothy Parker, Franklin P. Adams, Woollcott and the other luminaries of the brilliant ’20s held forth.

• His famous tour of Russia in 1933—as the first American performer to play the “Soviet Circuit.” The Russian audiences adored him, and the American ambassador entrusted him with a secret government mission.

• His other Round Table, in Hollywood. Harpo tells what happens when he, Jack Benny, George Burns, Eddie Cantor and other Hollywood greats hide away in their favorite nook of the Hillcrest Country Club.

• His little-publicized but unique and touching romance. He was Hollywood’s Most Eligible Bachelor for years—until he met Susan Fleming, or vice versa. “Life on a Harp Ranch” tells the thoroughly delightful story of their little known family life.

• His historic encounter with two great musical personalities, Oscar Levant came to dinner—and stayed a year and a month. Sergei Rachmaninoff left within an hour, vanquished by his own prelude.

• His special version of the Marx Brothers’ climb to fame. For the first time, we learn many of the hilarious escapades and poignant episodes that occurred along the journey from New York’s upper East Side to the center of Broadway’s stage, Hollywood’s screen and America’s heart.

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About the Author: Rowland Barber, who collaborated with Harpo Marx in the writing of this book, is perhaps best known as the author of The Night They Raided Minsky’s and as the co-author, with Rocky Graziano, of Somebody Up There Likes Me. He is also a frequent contributor to many national magazines. In any remaining spare time, he writes motion picture and television scripts. Young as he is, Barber is probably one of the most seasoned contemporary writers, having cut his teeth on a typewriter at the age of seven.

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Compiler’s Note: All four of the Marxes’ children were adopted. See, also, Son of Harpo Speaks! by Bill Marx (2011, Applause).

From the Publisher: A witty and intriguing look into the world of foster care through the eyes of a foster parent. It breaks down the expectations and regulations that parents in foster care are faced with and it touches on the problems in government policy affecting foster children. It does all this while thoroughly entertaining the reader. It is an indispensable resource for anyone considering adoption or foster care and a great read for just about anyone else.

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About the Author: 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 health care.

Krista Hoffman graduated with an M.A. in clinical psychology from Loyola University and is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC), and a Parenting Coordinator for the Howard County Circuit Court. Krista began her career in psychology at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and now works in private practice. She has mentored children through the Choice Program at UMBC and has taught English and psychology at Mount De Sales Academy.

Matthew and Krista maintained a foster license in the Baltimore/Washington area for nearly a decade and specialized in therapeutic foster care. Together, they have achieved their greatest accomplishment nurturing several foster children in a therapeutic and loving environment.

From the Back Cover: This guidebook will help prospective parents and those who are pregnant or postpartum! You’ll find full-page reviews of more than 125 important resources, including books, websites, and more. Our recommendations identify the best resources to use for:

• Understanding the changes and challenges your pregnancy will bring

• Understanding your options for childbirth, including natural childbirth alternatives

• Learning about the benefits of breastfeeding and dealing with its challenges

• Preparing for your child’s first year, including baby care and development

• Dealing with infertility and considering the option of adoption

Use this book as your guide to understanding and control of the decisions you’ll face during your pregnancy, childbirth, and your child’s first year.

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About the Author: Rich Wemhoff, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist with 25 years’ experience in counseling and teaching at the secondary and university level. He has directed the Emmaus Counseling Center in Redmond, Washington, since 1986 (providing family, couple, and individual psychotherapy and clinical supervision).

Molly Pessl, BSN, IBCLC, is a registered nurse, an ASPO certified childbirth educator, and certified lactation consultant with 35 years’ experience. Her work at the Family Maternity Center of Evergreen Hospital (Kirkland, Washington) culminated in Evergreen being named the first “Baby Friendly” hospital in the United States. Molly has developed preconception, prenatal, and postpartum education programs, created the regional Breastfeeding Center, and coordinates the Family Maternity Center’s Professional Education Program. Molly is the mother of five children.

From the Back Cover: When faced with a cancer diagnosis, many doctors and patients rush full-speed ahead into treatment, giving minimal attention to the potential fertility implications. Luckily, the field of oncofertility is growing quickly, and medical writer Gina M. Shaw is ready to guide you through pre- and post-cancer fertility and family-building options—for both men and women. This manual gives you all the tools you need to:

• Understand how different cancers can affect fertility

• Discuss fertility-sparing treatment options with your doctor

• Select the fertility preservation method that’s right for you

• Analyze the chances of getting pregnant with difficult methods

• Have a healthy post-cancer pregnancy

• Explore surrogacy and what to tell candidates about your medical history

• Consider adoption through survivor-friendly programs and countries

• Navigate insurance-company red-tape

• Think through the implications of mother- and fatherhood after cancer

With a foreword by Hope S. Rugo, medical oncologist and professor of medicine at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, this first and only cancer-and-fertility guide for patients and survivors will help you be your own best advocate throughout the journey.

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Gina M. Shaw, an award-winning health and medical writer, was newly married and trying for a baby when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, she’s a survivor and proud mother of three children, both adopted and biological. She has been published by Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, Fitness, Woman’s Day, and WebMD. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

After a sorted childhood [sic], she pushed on to make her life defined by something other than abuse and sadness. She hadn’t been in college long when she decided education was the avenue she would pursue. As her life shaped and molded, she found her rock, her savior Jesus Christ. Shortly after she began living fully for him and was accepted as a teacher for an ESL program in China. On the journey of a lifetime, Janis comes across a most unexpected twist. While she began work in an orphanage, God began work on her heart. It wasn’t long before Janis realized her calling to adopt baby Sarah and pull her from the abusive life she was in. After seemingly impossible obstacles, Janis brought Sarah home to give her the life a child deserves. That was only the beginning. You’ll be overcome with respect and gratitude as you walk with Janis through the stresses and frustrations of an intercontinental adoption. Janis gives all the glory to God and knows that her constant faith in him was the biggest influence in Bringing Sarah Home.

This is a testimony of how God has moved in amazing and mysterious ways in the life of a woman willing to be used of God. He was there through the growing-up and getting-an-education years, through the selection of a life mate, through twenty years of life in the military community, through the grief of losing loved ones, and through new ministries in the retirement years. This book is the result of God’s grace in a time of grief, which resulted in the author writing and publishing three books of prose and poetry based upon incidents from her own life. These books are now used in a ministry to share God’s love. From these books came this life testimony of how God is always with us and desires the best for us. He also wants to bless us and use us in the furtherance of His kingdom through the work He asks us to do for Him here in this life. The author’s desire is that by the sharing of her walk with God she can help someone to stay close to our Lord in his or her daily walk through life.

When my husband and I adopted three-year-old Tyler from Ukraine in 1992, the orphanage director told us, “He just needs to be loved,” but Tyler needed much more than love. The product of neglect and abuse, he was a wounded little soul who fought every attempt to be integrated into our family, afraid to trust human relationships. During his first years in America, Tyler was diagnosed with PDD (an autism spectrum disorder), and Tourette Syndrome, leaving my family overwhelmed and ill-prepared to handle such an emotionally fragile little boy. He Just Needs to Be Loved chronicles Tyler’s journey from a troubled child to a confident, happy, young man with endless possibilities.

From the Publisher: On April 15, 2006, a red-headed, 46-year-old American executive drove Highway 101 through the coastal fog with three children abandoned by fieldworkers and felons asleep beneath blankets quick lit by the haloed high-beams of passing cars and trucks. Under a crescent pearl moon, the migrant family of four bid farewell to Santa Barbara County and their past.

He Shall Appear From Nowhere is a haunting and deeply human chronicle of four strangers turned family and the brutality, obstacles, and discrimination they rebuff with grit, humor, and purpose. A multi-ethnic odyssey, He Shall Appear From Nowhere obliterates the traditional distinctions between race, gender, and class, and transforms today’s prosaic immigration debate into a spinning kaleidoscope.

In 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, only 8,000 children were adopted from local Social Services agencies by people without a previous relationship with the children. Just 2%, or 160, entered the home of a single male. David Marin adopted three. He was likely the only single Caucasian man in the nation to adopt three minority children.

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About the Author: David Marin (pronounced “marine”) is the Vice President of Mainstreet Media Group, publisher of 21 California newspapers and magazines. After graduating from law school in 1995, he held executive positions at E.W. Scripps, MediaNews, and Pulitzer Newspapers. David is an award-winning public speaker. He honed his presentation skills through the national organization Toastmasters where he competed against other highly trained presenters. David, a comfortable and engaging speaker, has made dozens of presentations to large audiences, among them, local community associations, business owners, and reader groups. David has the presence and skills suited to national media. Born in Georgia, David, who is half Puerto Rican, was raised in the Midwest, attended prep schools on the East coast, and has spent the past twenty years on the West Coast. An adventurer by nature, he has traveled to eleven countries and visited thirty-six of our fifty states. He has gone skydiving in Arizona, water skied on the Caribbean, tried to join Lech Walesa’s 1981 anti-communist Polish revolution, and rescued giant green sea turtles in Central America. By far the greatest adventure of David’s life—and his most powerful asset for the promotion of He Shall Appear From Nowhere—is his fatherhood. David and his children live in California.

Nurturing and dependable relationships are the building blocks of healthy childhood development. Secure attachments are basic to every aspect of a child’s well-being—mind, brain, emotions, relationships, and morality. Wounded children—those who have experienced maltreatment, loss, and disrupted attachments—are often defiant, angry, biologically disorganized, and afraid to trust and love. They are extremely challenging to parent. Healing Parents gives parents and caregivers the information, skills, self-understanding, support, and hope they need to be therapeutic and healing parents. This book is a toolbox filled with practical ideas and strategies that will enable parents to understand their child, create healthy relationships, and help their child heal emotional wounds and improve behaviorally, socially, and morally.

From the Back Cover: The Healing Power of the Family is a tribute to foster and adoptive parents and to their potent influence upon the disturbed children who have joined their families. This book addresses: telltale “survival behaviors” displayed by troubled, formerly abused children, the predictable, devastating impact of the disturbed child on the foster or adoptive family, unique family-based strategies which focus on curbing disruptive behaviors, while building bridges between the child and family, special issues related to parenting disturbed foster and adopted children.

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About the Author: Richard J. Delaney, Ph.D., is a practicing psychologist, nationally known consultant and trainer. He is a consultant to the Casey Family Program, Lutheran Family Services and to various county departments of social services.

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By the Same Author: Fostering Changes: Treating Attachment-Disordered Foster Children (1991, WJ Corbett); Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster and Adopted Children (with Frank R Kustal, Ed.D.) (1993, University of Southern Maine); The Long Journey Home (1994, Journey Press); Raising Cain: Caring for Troubled Youngsters/Repairing Our Troubled System (1998); The Permutations of Permanency: Making Sensitive Placement Decisions (1998); Safe Passage: A Summary of the “Parent 2 Parent” Mentoring Program (2000); and Small Feats: Unsung Accomplishments and Everyday Heroics of Foster and Adoptive Parents (2003).

From the Publisher: Longing for a child of her own, Vickie Bryan went through twelve years of barrenness before adopting. The Heart of Adoption is designed to be a point of contact between God and those who do not want to remain barren. Allow this book to become a companion of hope in the reader’s walk to parenthood. In this book the reader will discover: Bryan’s Personal Story, God’s Heart for Adoption, God’s Promise to Give Children, Biblical Examples of Barrenness, A Relationship with God, Prayer to Become a Parent, Adopted Children in the Bible, Encouragement for Adoption, Sources for Adoption Research, Scriptures for Having Children, Encouragement and Building of Faith for a Child, Personal Journal, God’s Call to the Church, And much more.

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About the Author: Vickie Patterson Bryan, devoted wife and mother of five adopted children, has been a Christian for over twenty years. She continues to glean nuggets of truth from her deep relationship with the Lord. God uses her love of children to bring life changing power to the lives of those who will hear.

From the Publisher: The Heart of Adoption was written to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the different perspectives of adoption. The book takes a peek into the heart of many people touched by this powerful event we call “adoption.” As we journey, we will get a glimpse into the following: The Heart of God; The Heart of the Birthparent; The Heart of the Adoptee; The Heart of the Adoptive Parents; The Heart of Family and Friends; The Heart of Abortion; and The Heart of the Professional. Each chapter of the book begins with some thoughts, feelings, and sayings from each one’s perspective. Hopefully this will give some insight into their hearts in order to open our minds to understand and embrace the adoption process and experience. Every chapter includes a collection of writings—letters, inspirational quotes, Scriptures, facts, and short personal experiences and stories.

The book is for anyone who has a desire to adopt, or feels called to support orphans, or just wants to read a great, true-life story about a family yielding to the Lord as He leads them to adoption.