At fourteen, Emma is just a child herself—and one who’s never been properly mothered. She has been in foster care several times already and when she discovered she was pregnant, and refused to have an abortion, her mother threw her out of the house. Casey and her family instantly form a strong bond with Emma’s baby Roman, but dealing with Emma’s behaviour and constant lack of responsibility is a far tougher challenge. And before long Casey finds she’s doing something she never thought she would—covering up for Emma’s shortcomings as she allows her personal involvement to colour her judgement. But the more Casey gets to know Emma the more she’s convinced that with the right help and guidance this lonely and unsupported girl can become a good mother to her gorgeous little boy. That’s what makes it even harder when Casey and her family have to make a stark choice: to hold on to Emma or look after Roman; to help a teenage girl desperate to turn her life around, or offer an innocent baby a safe home and much-needed good start in life.

From the Dust Jacket: The Last Run is the mesmerizing story of Kay Wolff, an American woman who went to Colombia seeking adventure and became a player in the dangerous, high-stakes cocaine trade. It was the early 1970s, and Kay’s most ambitious plans were to see the country and make a little money smuggling cocaine back to the States. Before long, however, Kay found herself the exotic American girl-friend of the son of one of Colombia’s most powerful cocaine padrones.

Scrappy, self-reliant, of Okie stock, Kay was an expert seamstress and artist, skills that soon landed her a job as a master “concealer” for the Alvarez family’s cocaine-export business. She was responsible for concealing the drugs in ever more original places—from the seams of expensive French luggage to the cushions of exquisitely upholstered chairs. Through her we gain an exceedingly rare view inside a mafia family—and witness meetings where everything from business to betrayal to murder is on the agenda.

Increasingly strung out on cocaine herself, increasingly frightened by la violencia, which is raging out of control throughout Colombia, Kay vows to escape. And, to affirm her dedication to a “new life,” she impulsively adopts two street children, gamines, as her daughters, they become her last contraband cargo on her “last run” back to the united States, to freedom.

This thrilling story of adventure and redemption reads like fast-paced fiction, but it is astonishing fact. Combining an incredibly vivid portrait of Colombia with details of how the drug business really works, The Last Run is a never-before-revealed account of an absolutely riveting adventure. You’ll never forget Kay Wolff or her dramatic life inside one of the most dangerous businesses on earth.

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About the Author: Kay Wolff is the pseudonym of a reformed drug runner; she lives with her two adopted Colombian daughters in California.

Sybil Taylor is a writer who lives in New York City.

This is the real life story of an ordinary woman raised in extraordinary times. Born in WWI, Dorothea v.S. Lawson witnessed it all—the rise and fall of Hitler and his Nazi Party, WWII and the Berlin Wall. While she had a relatively care-free youth, life went downhill quickly. Her first-hand account includes the air raids and intense bombing of Berlin, the food rationing and ever-present hunger with 8-hour long food hunting trips to farmers in the countryside. Her description of the Soviet invasion in Berlin will be an eye-opener for many. And then came the American occupation where she worked as a cook at her confiscated in-law’s house, which was turned into an officers’ mess. Except she didn’t know how to cook, and what on earth was an egg sunny side up? Her life is full of historical facts, but brings out the ordinary citizen perspective not found in history books, including many jokes about the Third Reich that were once punishable by imprisonment or death. And along the way she gives the reader a dose of German culture. Her stories demonstrate that war unites as much as it divides and that history is embedded in the lives of individuals, not in textbooks. And throughout, the human spirit prevails—since laughter wasn’t rationed.

From the Dust Jacket: Whether you’re a prospective parent still anticipating your baby’s arrival or you’re already parenting a baby under a year old, if you’re adopting, Launching a Baby’s Adoption is for you. Among all those pregnancy and infant care guides for expectant moms and dads filling bookstore shelves to other looks at parenting not by birth, but by adoption. Here is your guide to getting ready... to the psychological pregnancy that will help you prepare a place in your heart, in your home, in your relationship, your family, in your life for a child who will be all yours.

Coping with the insensitivity of others... that’s here. Deciding whether to breast or bottle feed... it’s here. Figuring out what’s different about adopting as opposed to giving birth and identifying when something is “an adoption thing” rather than another normal parenting issue... you’ll find it here. Practical strategies for promoting attachment when baby comes not from the hospital, but by way of an orphanage or foster home—yes, that’s here too. Getting what you need from professionals... adjusting your relationship with your parenting partner... coping with a change of heart... All here in Launching a Baby’s Adoption. Oh, and if you are a prospective birthparent considering adoption or a professional working with adoption-touched families—a counselor, social worker, medical practitioner, attorney—please read Launching a Baby’s Adoption.

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About the Author: Patricia Irwin Johnston, M.S., is an internationally known infertility and adoption educator and the author of several books, including Understanding Infertility: Insights for Family and Friends, Taking Charge of Infertility, Adopting after Infertility, and Perspectives on a Grafted Tree: Thoughts or Those Touched by Adoption. Pat’s work has received several awards. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada to provide workshops for both consumers and professionals.

After personal experiences with infertility, the Johnston family has extended itself in several directions through the adoption of two generations of children, so that five generations of Johnstons have so far been directly touched by adoption. Pat and her husband Dave are the parents of three: a young adult, a teenager, and a middle school student.

A founding member of the National Advisory Committee and continuing National Board member of Adoptive Families of America, Pat’s voluntarism includes work at the local, state, national and international level. At the end of Pat’s fourteen years of volunteer work with RESOLVE (beginning as a chapter founder and ending as chair of the National Board of Directors) RESOLVE named its annual volunteer-of-the-year award in her honor.

The Johnstons are based in Indianapolis.

From the Dust Jacket: Spanning some eight decades, here is the remarkable and remarkably candid autobiography of an extraordinary woman, born with—and very much a part of—the twentieth century.

Laura Z. (for Zametkin) Hobson ... from her childhood as the daughter of the first editor of the Jewish Daily Forward to a stint of reporting on the New York Post; from marriage to and divorce from book publisher Thayer Hobson to director of promotion of Time and a position as perhaps the leading magazine promotion writer in the country; from the extraordinary adoption of one son and the birth of another—both as a single parent—to sudden international fame following publication of the classic novel about antisemitism—Gentleman’s Agreement; and along the way very personal memories of such as Henry R. Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Thompson, PM newspaper founder Ralph Ingersoll, Simon & Schuster co-founder Richard Simon and many more ... here indeed is a life.

Laura Z evokes the cultural and political drama of an America in turmoil and transition—and reveals a woman whose life placed her sometimes at odds with, and surely generations ahead of, her time.

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About the Author: Laura Z. Hobson’s novels include The Trespassers, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Other Father, The Celebrity, First Papers, The Tenth Month, Consenting Adult, Over and Above and Untold Millions. She has also written two books for children. She makes her home in New York City.

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By the Same Author: Laura Z: A Life: Years of Fulfillment (1986, Donald I. Fine), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: Laura Z. Hobson, author of the landmark Gentleman’s Agreement, never did anything by half. Here, now, is a relentlessly honest chronicle of this fascinating and talented woman, born with the century, deeply involved with the social, cultural and political issues of her day and, more often than not, far ahead of her time.

Years of Fulfillment captures us in the whirlwind of her tremendous success with Gentleman’s Agreement—the book and the academy-award winning movie. With both modesty and a still-fresh sense of joy, she evokes the unique aura around a world-wide sensation. Here follow lively anecdotes of the famous and the infamous, including among others Bennett Cerf, Oscar Hammerstein, James Thurber, Clare Boothe Luce and Hubert Humphrey.

Here, too, are the personal crises, the irony and the humor that parallel professional triumph, her deeply-felt political convictions including anti-communist liberalism and support of Israel. And the pride and challenge of being a single mother of an adopted son and a natural son who was a homosexual.

Laura Z. Hobson was a woman fueled by a tireless energy and uncompromising intelligence. A woman of and beyond her time, she was a true original, as is her no-holds-barred portrait of herself and her times.

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About the Author: Laura Z. Hobson’s novels include Untold Millions, The Tenth Month, Consenting Adult and Gentleman’s Agreement, among others. She died February 28, 1986 at the age of eighty-five.

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By the Same Author: Laura Z: A Life (1983, Arbor House), among others.

Jill Norton’s life was not how she envisioned it. Instead of a calm, peaceful life of control, God called Jill and her husband to open their hearts and home to ten foster children. Over the course of six years, Tom and Jill gave eight of those children a forever family through the miracle of adoption. In A Leap of Faith, Jill reveals a true look at the difficulties and rewards in allowing God to write the story of her life. By sharing her heart warming and sometimes funny, personal stories of each child, she encourages potential and current, foster and adoptive parents in their own journeys with special needs children. In this book, Jill looks at how the system works; how to manage birth family connections, and why those connections are vital; critical tips to make foster and adoptive parents’ journeys easier; and how she and her husband discipline. Jill also offers an intimate look at what this call on their life has cost them, and she answers the question, “Would they do it all over again?” No matter where you find yourself in your own life story, you will appreciate the way Jill shares the ups, downs, and crazy life of a family that has chosen to step out of their comfort zone, and make a difference in the lives of eight precious children.

The desire to create a family can easily stretch across an ocean. When a child from another country, another culture, joins a family in the United States, it is often the culmination of years of dogged determination. It is the signing of a paper, the blink of an eye. It is the end of the red tape roller coaster and the beginning of another. Everyone must grow, learn and love in ways they never thought possible. This non-fiction work describes that awe-inspiring first year everyone in these families was learning to love a stranger.

From the Back Cover: The heartrending true story of a child destined to end upin care, and the carer determined to forge a bond with her, against the odds.

The child of a suicidal alcoholic mother, India was originally with a previous foster carer for five months. She arrived with Mia at the age of three after India’s mother, Amy, made her previous carer’s life very difficult. With dedication and persistenoe, Mia finally becomes close enough to Amy to understand the root of her destructive behaviour: she was one of seven siblings, all of whom were abused and ended up in care.

With India finally settled in Mia’s happy household, Mia embarks on an amazing Journey to help mother and daughter break away from their unhappy pasts.

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About the Author: Mia Marconi has an Italian father and an Irish mother. She grew up in London and has been a foster carer here for over 20 years. During that time she has welcomed more than 250 children into her home. To protect the identities of people she is writing under a pseudonym.

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By the Same Author: A Child Called Hope (2014); If Only He’d Told Me (2014); and Little Girl Lost (2015).

Matthew Timion’s Leaving Salt Lake City is the story of a personal train wreck. The story starts when he moves to Salt Lake City to live an idyllic life with the woman of his dreams and the child they later adopt. Suddenly, his perfect life turns into a nightmare filled with spies, lies, betrayal, and enduring poverty. Matthew must forge a new life for his son and for himself by becoming the leader of his own life while facing the painful reality of truly meeting the woman he married for the first time.

From the Back Cover: What if the birth father can’t be located?

What laws apply if I locate a baby in another state?

Can I pay for the birth mother’s medical expenses?

Finally, a book that answers all of your legal questions about independent adoptions. The Legal Adoption Guide helps you protect your new family by walking you through every aspect of an independent adoption—from locating a qualified attorney to interviewing potential birth mothers. This one-of-a-kind handbook prepares you for possible problems before they arise, ensuring that your adoption situation is as safe as the law allows. Here are just a few of the topics adoption expert Colleen Alexander-Roberts covers:

• the differences between open, semi-open, and confidential adoptions

• the kinds of advertising available to locate a birth mother and what is legal

• the rights of a birth father

• evaluating a possible adoption situation

• how long a birth mother has to withdraw her consent to the adoption

The kinds of cases often dramatized by the media—the kind where a toddler is taken from the only parents she has ever known only to be handed over to her birth parents who are virtual strangers—are every adopting parent’s worst nightmare. Luckily, they are also extremely rare and avoidable. With the help of a state-by-state checklist of adoption laws and real-life case studies, The Legal Adoption Guide is your comprehensive guide to completing a safe, permanent adoption.

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About the Author: Colleen Alexander-Roberts is the adoptive mother of two sons. An author specializing in parenting issues with five books to her credit, including The Essential Adoption Handbook, she lives in Holland, Ohio.

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By the Same Author: The Essential Adoption Handbook (1993).

From the Back Cover: The Legal Answer Book for Families covers hundreds of everyday legal questions that nearly everyone encounters eventually. Written by family law experts, it will be your family’s first legal resource.

Key areas covered include:

Couples: Marriage requirements, prenuptial agreements, green cards for fiancés, rights of same-sex partners, obligations for a spouse’s debt, divorce, changing your name after marriage or divorce and more.

Children: Rights of birth and adoptive parents and adopted children, foster care, guardianships, child support, custody and visitation, bullying, teenage run-ins with the law and juvenile court, and kids’ rights when it comes to work, driving and special education.

Seniors: Government programs for health insurance and residential care, and essential estate planning documents such as a healthcare power of attorney.

Plus, for these topics and more, find detailed legal information and resources for all U.S. states, including the best websites and organizations.

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About the Author: Emily Doskow is a practicing attorney who has worked with families in the Bay Area for more than 20 years. She is the author of Nolo’s Essential Guide to Divorce and a coauthor of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (with Janelle Orsi) and Making It Legal: A Guide to Same-Sex Marriage, Domestic Partnerships & Civil Unions (with Frederick Hertz). Emily specializes in family law, including adoption, parentage issues, domestic partnership formation and dissolution, and divorce. She is a graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

Marcia Stewart writes and edits books on landlord-tenant law, real estate, and other consumer issues. She is the co-author of First-Time Landlord, Nolo’s Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home, Every Landlord’s Legal Guide, Every Tenant’s Legal Guide, Leases and Rental Agreements, and Renters’ Rights.

From the Publisher: It takes courage to decide to foster or adopt a child, knowing that your life will now be an open book. In addition, if you are a lesbian or gay man, you face the additional hurdles of prejudice and legal obstacles. Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption presents a collection of personal accounts given by singles and couples in Great Britain who have fostered or adopted children. The book also includes an editorial essay which examines the many issues involved when lesbians or gay men choose this method of building a family.

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About the Author: Stephen Hicks is a lecturer in Social Work in the Department of Applied Community Studies at the Manchester Mentropolitan University. He has been researching lesbian and gay fostering since 1992, and is a founder member of the Northern section of LAGFAPN (Lesbian and Gay Foster and Adoptive Parents Network). He has been a social worker for children under eleven years old at a voluntary organization in Manchester and has also worked in community mental health services.

Janet McDermott is also a member of LAGFAPN Northern group, She works part-time as Co-Ordinator of an Asian Women’s Training Project in Sheffield, and is also a writer and freelance trainer. Previously, she worked as a secondary school teacher and as a refuge worker. She and her partner have adopted a ten-year-old girl.

From the Back Cover: Drawing on in-depth interviews with families and experts and her own personal and professional experience, April Martin walks the reader through the many issues involved in forming and nurturing a lesbian or gay family, including:

• the decision to parent—or not to parent

• different options for creating a family, from artificial insemination to adoption to surrogacy

• the many legal considerations, including a sample parental agreement

• relationships and communications within the family and with extended family members, friends, and one’s community

• the special circumstances of relationship break-ups and other crises

• the needs of children over time

• where to turn for additional information and support, including a detailed resource section with listings of organizations and parenting groups

With just the right mix of personal wisdom and seasoned advice, The Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook shows lesbians and gay men how to build the kind of support network that all parents need. And through the voices of lesbian and gay parents and their children talking about their experiences, April Martin celebrates the love, courage, and joy of these pioneering families.

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About the Author: April Martin, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice working with individuals, couples, and families, and is an adjunct clinical supervisor at Yeshiva University’s Doctoral Program in Psychology. She lives in New York City with her life partner and their two children.

What would you do when the beautiful baby you’ve adopted turns out to have serious disabilities? When the doctors tell you to “give her back”? When you’re also struggling to build a business, finish school and hold your marriage together? Lessons from Katherine is a spiritual memoir about loving and parenting our disabled child amidst grief, financial difficulty, and marital discord. It’s the struggle of every young marriage and family: to hold on, to form a family, to carve out a place in the world—but amplified.

In this day and age our lives tend to be all planned out. We spend years dreaming and striving toward our goals; believing that we know exactly what we need to be happy and fulfilled. But what happens when our lives don’t go as we planned? What happens when the possibility of acquiring your deepest desire is stripped away and leaves you empty, lost and asking the same question over and over, “Why God?” Bob and Lisa Perron asked that question more than once in their quest to become parents. The large family they yearned for was not the family God had intended for them. Lessons Learned from a God-Sized Family in a “Me-Sized” World is a collection of stories telling about what God has taught them through their journey to become parents and the many things they have learned through raising their children.

This book tell the story of the foreign adoption process of the author’s youngest daughter, Kim.

From the Publisher: There are many kinds of adoption—and in this workbook the children of The Adoption Club find out about all of them! The children of The Adoption Club are all different. There’s Mary who was adopted from China by her single mum, Alice, who is still in touch with her birth parents in an “open adoption”; siblings Angela and Michael who lived in different homes for many years but are now back together; Robert who loves to do stunts in his wheelchair; and Alexander who grew up with lots of children in a care home. Written for counsellors and therapists working with children aged 5-11, as well as adoptive parents, this workbook is one of a set of five interactive therapeutic workbooks written to address the key emotional and psychological challenges they are likely to experience. They provide an approachable, interactive and playful way to help children to learn about themselves and have fun at the same time.

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About the Author: Regina M. Kupecky, LSW, has worked in the adoption arena for more than thirty years as an adoption placement worker and therapist. She was named “Adoption Worker of the Year” in 1990 by the Ohio Department of Human Services. She is currently a therapist with Dr. Keck at the Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio, where she works with children who have attachment disorders. She trains nationally and internationally on adoption issues, sibling issues, and attachment. Ms. Kupecky authored a resource guide, Siblings Are Family Too, which is available through the Three Rivers Adoption Council in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has coauthored a curriculum with Dr. Keck and Arleta James called Abroad and Back: Parenting and International Adoption and has written a curriculum on sibling issues titled My Brother, My Sister: Sibling Relations in Adoption and Foster Care.

Seattle technology entrepreneur and freelance author Ed Harris shares the heartwarming, funny and endearing story of his multiracial, international Jewish family. Ed is from New York, his wife Anne is from Amsterdam and they met in Israel as teenagers. After a series of adventures, including inadvertently sharing an apartment with a prostitute in Tel Aviv who threatened to have them cut into pieces by the Israeli mafia, and then renting a flat from a mobster in Amsterdam, they make their way to New Jersey to pursue their educations and settle down. After getting an MBA, Ed begins his career and they buy a home in a charming small town, Montclair, NJ. There is only one problem: they discover they aren’t getting pregnant, and so at a relatively early age they begin to pursue adoption. Eventually, they find their way to Cuzco, Peru, ancient capital of the Incas, and become a family when a tiny brown baby girl is put into their arms and transforms their lives forever. They manage to flee Cuzco on the eve of a change of government that brings in a new dictator and closes the country to future international adoptions. Eventually, after a move from NJ to Seattle, a biological boy is born the old fashioned way, and third child, a baby boy from Guatemala, is finally added to the mix. A family with an assortment of skin colors, countries of origin, and, it later turns out, alternative sexual orientations, provides endless amusement and holds lessons on family life and parenting. Readers will be both fascinated and richly entertained by this well-told tale of a modern American family that has carved out an identity on its own terms, maintaining traditional values in a rapidly changing world.

The authors of Let’s Talk About Adoption are themselves adoptive parents; Elton Klibanoff is also the Deputy Director of the Massachusetts Office for Children. Their book was written because their experience brought home to them the almost total lack of information or the confused misinformation on adoption prevalent on every socio-economic level in spite of the fact that some 200,000 children were adopted in this country last year. “For too long,” they write, “adoption has been a ‘closet’ subject ... At best, the children were ‘special’ or ‘chosen’; at worst they were ‘different’ or ‘strange.’ ” Believing that adoption affects almost everyone at some point, either centrally or peripherally, the authors hope to correct misconceptions and clarify the facts. Their chapters discuss the varieties of adopting families and adopted children—childless couples, families with one or more biological children, the single parent, “special” children, the foreign child—and even touch on subsidized adoption. We are shown briskly the hurdles, delays, frustrations, uncertainties, social discomforts, and the great rewards of beginning or adding to a family by adoption. The legal steps are sketched out and the epilogue includes model bylaws for an adoptive patents’ organization and model reform laws.

This book is intended to act as a guide to would-be adopters as to how the process works within the Local Authority network. A must read for anybody contemplating adoption.

Are you or are your family and friends confused about openness in adoption? A Letter to Adoptive Parents on Open Adoption is an introduction to the subject. This book is a compilation of information that is helpful in preparing for an open adoption. You’ll need extra copies to give to other people in your life who may not understand or agree with you about open adoption.

A flip book, a letter to birth mom from child and the other side is a letter from adopted mom.

From the Publisher: “Amazing Grace” transformed John Newton from a wretched sea captain of slave ships to a passionate pastor and hymn writer. Grace further equipped Newton, who was childless, to become a tender, loving, and compassionate father. He adopted his two orphaned nieces, Elizabeth and Eliza. Newton took no courses in parenting, nor did he have the opportunity to read the countless volumes of self help books on child rearing that grace bookstore shelves today. He wholly relied on the guidance of his heavenly Father. Through prayer and the reading of the Bible, he discipled his daughters in the love and counsel of the Lord.

It is clearly evident in the compilation of these letters and memoirs to his daughters that he embraced the words of 3 John:4 “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” Newton’s godly mother faithfully instructed him in the truth through prayer and the reading of the Scriptures. She died when he was only six years of age and left him to be raised by his irreligious father. What joy and thanksgiving would fill her heart to know that the seeds of truth that she sewed in the life of her young son grew and blossomed. Newton accepted God’s gift of salvation as an adult and further shared this gift with his own children.

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About the Author: Jody Moreen, adoptee, is the editor of Adoption Blessings Journal, a Christian publication and facilitator of Adoptees, Birth Parents and Adoptive Parents Together, a Chicago area adoption support group. She is a freelance writer, speaker, and mentor celebrating adoption and the sanctity of life. Jody has been a volunteer for over a decade in the adoption community locally and online. She resides in Naperville, IL, with her husband Scott and three sons.

Letters from the Heart is a collection of letters by adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents written to Adoption Triangle Ministry in response to Sandy Musser’s guest appearance on the 700 Club and PTL during the early 1980s.

A must-have resource guide for any family adopting a child from Liberia. It’s one thing to make it through the process of adopting internationally; it’s an entirely different thing to be properly prepared for a child’s homecoming. In this book, written by Liberia Adoption Coordinator Angel Rutledge, adoptive families learn about the history of Liberia, cultural influences that affect Liberian adoptions, common post adoption challenges, medical issues, and how to ensure the best transition possible for their family and child. About the Author: Angel Rutledge is a Liberia Adoption Coordinator for Christian Adoption Services, a Hague accredited adoption agency founded in 1979. Angel is a wife and mother of four children, two of whom were adopted from Liberia. She lives in Charlotte, NC, with her family and can be found at www.rutledge6.blogspot.com where she writes about her experiences as a mother and as an adoption coordinator to Liberia.

A dancer from age 12, British performer Jill Ireland became an audience favorite in her teens thanks to her many engagements at the London Palladium. Signed to a Rank Organization contract in 1955, Ireland made her first screen appearance as a ballerina in Oh, Rosalind. In 1957, Ireland married actor David McCallum, with whom she would later appear in several Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV episodes. Her second husband was action star Charles Bronson, whom she married in 1967. From 1970 onward, Ireland seldom appeared onscreen without her husband; their best collaborative efforts include Hard Times (1975) and From Noon Til Three. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984, Ireland underwent a mastectomy, gaining the respect of friends and fans alike for her courage in the face of death: she wrote a book on her recovery, Life Wish, in 1987, and served as chairperson of the National Cancer Society. Ireland then devoted herself to rehabilitating her adopted son Jason McCallum, who had become a drug addict. ... Life Lines, [is the story of] her struggle to bring her son back to health. His death from an overdose in 1989 weakened Ireland’s already precarious physical state. Refusing to surrender to despair, Ireland was busy at work on her third book of reminiscences, Life Times, when she died in 1990. One year later, a TV biopic, Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story, was telecast, with Jill Clayburgh as Ireland and Lance Henriksen as Charles Bronson (though not so named, as Bronson was dead-set against the film and refused to allow his name to be mentioned on-screen). — Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marta Brown’s childhood was one of struggle—growing up in a dysfunctional family with a physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive father, she could have very easily considered herself a victim of circumstance and given in to anger and hatred. Instead, she turned toward God to find her way—a choice that led her to a beautiful, strong, lifelong marriage as well as a steadfast Christian faith. Despite her many challenges in life, Marta’s story is one of strength, persistence, and optimism—of learning to move beyond her circumstances by abiding within her faith in God and His plans for her. None of us knows what lies on the road ahead for us, but with her story, Marta offers us a guiding light for the journey. Marta Brown has been married for more than fifty years to a wonderful, compassionate, Christian man who has encouraged her to overcome her childhood traumas and use writing as an outlet for expressing herself. Over the years, Marta has tried to instill in her children and grandchildren that the circumstances in our childhoods are often out of our control—but as an adult, you have choices to make. You can either stay in patterns you learned at home or take a chance and move in a new direction in life—a direction of faith, forgiveness, and happiness. Marta and her husband currently reside in Reno, Nevada.

From the Back Cover: Through words, pictures, photographs, certificates and other “little treasures,” a Life Story Book provides a detailed account of the child’s early history and a chronology of their life.

This clear and concise book shows a new family-friendly way to compile a Life Story Book that promotes a sense of permanency for the child, and encourages attachments within the adoptive family. Joy Rees’ improved model works chronologically backwards rather than forwards, aiming to reinforce the child’s sense of belonging and security within the adoptive family before addressing the child’s past and early trauma. The book contains simple explanations of complex concepts, practical examples and helpful suggestions.

Perfect for busy social workers in local authority children and adoption teams, approved adoption agencies and adoptive parents, Life Story Books for Adopted Children is a refreshing, innovative and common-sense guide.

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About the Author: Joy Rees is an adoption support worker in a local authority adoption and permanence team in the London borough of Merton, and a Family Futures Associate. She has 30 years’ experience as a social worker specialising in children and family work.

From the Dust Jacket: Over twenty years ago, in a small Israeli town, a desperate mother told a remarkable lie. She told her friends and family that her newborn child had died. That lie became the catalyst for the unfolding truth of the adoption of that same baby—Michael—who is, in fact, very much alive and now twenty-two years old. He also has Down syndrome.

When Kathryn Hulings adopted Michael as an infant, she could not have known that he would save her life when she became gravely ill and was left forever physically compromised. Her story delights in how Michael’s life and hers, while both marked by difference and challenge, are forever intertwined in celebration and laughter. With candor and a sense of humor, Life With a Superhero wraps itself around the raucous joy of Michael’s existence with his four older siblings who play hard and love big; how Kathryn and her husband, Jim, utilize unconventional techniques in raising kids; the romance between Michael and his fiancée, Casey; the power of dance in Michael’s life as an equalizing and enthralling force; the staggering potential and creativity of those who are differently-abled; and the mind-blowing politics of how Kathryn navigated school systems and societal attitudes that at times fought to keep Michael excluded from the lives of kids deemed “normal.”

No other books about the parenting experience outline what to do when, say, a child runs across the roof of a tri-level house pretending he can fly, or shows up in a 7th grade social studies class dressed like Spiderman, or calls 911 when his girlfriend breaks his heart. But, as Michael’s mom, Kathryn has been trying to figure how to be a mother in just such circumstances—sometimes with success, sometimes with dismal failure—for over two decades.

Most of the books about parenting a child who has Down syndrome are concerned with only the first few years of life and are based in biological births. Life with a Superhero is fresh and new in that it engages the reader with the parenting journey all the way into young adulthood and it also involves the spectrum of adoption. This memoir chronicles not only the early years—filled with both trepidation and joy—of raising a child who has Down syndrome, but also the ups and downs of twelve years of public schooling, the slippery slope of the transition process into the population at large, navigating puberty and adolescence, friendships, community involvement with typical folks and folks with special needs, and the exuberant glee of finding love and contemplating marriage and an independent life.

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About the Author: Kathryn U. Hulings has called Fort Collins, Colorado, her home for over thirty years. While raising her family of five kids with her husband, Jim, Kathryn worked as sn advocate for children with special needs. Kathryn earned an MA in English/Creative Nonfiction from Colorado State University, where she is now an adjunct faculty member teaching composition and literature courses.