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Managing a household of eight children takes a lot of love and patience—and amazing parents. When six of your children are adopted from overseas, learning to adapt to any situation becomes a survival skill. Having created a riotously happy family, Julia and Barry Rollings thought they could handle anything life threw at them. That was until they received the devastating news that two of their children had not been willingly adopted out by both their parents in India. Much worse, Akil and Sabi had been stolen away from their mother while she slept, and sold by their father. What’s the right thing to do in such unthinkable circumstances? Do you accept the advice that “You adopt the child, not the family,” and let it go? Perhaps not tell the children until they are older—or perhaps never at all? But Julia Rollings is not one to take the easy road. With her family’s support, she takes a courageous leap of faith in deciding to reunite Akil and Sabi, then aged 13 and 12, with their birth mother Sunama. Heading into such an emotional landmine, the outcome could have been disastrous. Instead, it led to a moving journey of discovery to India that has expanded and enriched their family today in more ways than one. |
This has been the most important story that I could ever write, but the most draining to me mentally. As Robbie’s adoptive mom, it has been a tearing away of myself to see my real motives and feelings for him. His life has taught me much, but it has come at a personal cost to me. I am a nurturer by nature, like the many women in my family who came before me. Reactive Attachment Disordered children cannot handle nurturing on any level as they get to the teen years. This placed my natural desires at odds with my own child. This is quite a concept that many do not understand. Many people have said that all Robbie needs is love, as if my husband and I have never tried this option. What they do not understand is love is what is driving him away from us, his parents. But in our own way we are still trying, because we too believe that love is what he truly needs. This is why we cannot just give him back to the adoption agency. He needs us. This is why the title of this book is called, Love this Child. As a Quaker sitting in a unprogrammed service (no pastor just quiet), I would pray for God’s intervention on behalf of Robbie’s escalating concerns and the Holy Spirit would encourage me to love this child. Then I would say, “How do I love this child when he...?” The message never changed as I would pray for guidance from God each week. What I did not understand at the time and know now is that it takes love to raise these children. You have to be truly committed to them and their needs to get through the day-to-day living with them. I just wanted something more, I guess, as I prayed and then listened for the Holy Spirit’s leading. |
From the Back Cover:
The obstacles, surprises, and moments of grace that Jennifer Grant experienced, working through the adoption process to bring home her daughter from Guatemala, forever changed her life. Love You More tells Grant’s deeply personal story of adopting her daughter, Mia. The process confronted her notions about what family means, pushed her into uncomfortable places, and—despite the waiting, adjustments, and challenges of a blended family—brought abiding joy. Written for all parents but especially those interested in adoption, Love You More includes discussion questions, tips for prospective adoptive parents, and suggestions for readers on how to reach out in love and support for the world’s most vulnerable people, including orphans. About the Author: Jennifer Grant is a journalist whose columns, feature stories, and blog posts have been published in Sun-Times Media newspapers, Christiantiy Today, her.meneutics (Christianity Today’s blog for women), and adoption.com. Jennifer writes a column for the Chicago Tribune. She is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and is a founding member of Redbud Writers Guild. Jennifer lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and four children and has expertise in throwing parties, traveling light, and daydreaming. |
This is a true story. Twelve-year-old Karen knew when she locked eyes with Rob, that she had met her soul mate. Four years later, the passionate young couple are torn apart by Karen’s family move to Kentucky. Separated for twenty-seven years, enduring abuse, addiction, cancer, and near death experiences, the soul mates are once again reunited by chance. This is an unforgettable true story of young love that conquers all to reunite decades later. This book demonstrates the power and passion of love at any age. |
From the Dust Jacket: This is a heartwarming story of a couple who adopted eleven children. After being told that it would take a miracle for them to conceive, they chose to adopt again and again. They adopted babies, older children, and their siblings too. They proved that a stable, loving home filled with caring, sharing, and a sense of humor was what their children needed. It taught them to love their sisters and brothers. As a family, they enjoyed many trips, vacations, and sports activities with each other and their many friends. There were often difficult times of alcohol and drug abuse, runaways, and legal problems. But with many prayers and a bedrock belief in God to give them strength, they were able to see all their children become adults. Also, miracles happened when there were serious illnesses and terrible accidents. Thank Heavens for all the prayers! Today, as then, there are many children who need loving homes. All they are looking for is someone to unconditionally love them forever. This couple shows with enduring love how they managed during fifty years of marriage and a house-full of children. Those considering adoption need not be wealthy, only to have large hearts. Strange as it may seem, adopting a child or children more often brings as much joy and happiness and rewards to those adopting as it does to those who are adopted. About the Author: Marilyn Diskerud has always loved children and felt blessed that God chose her to be an adoptive mother. She was born in 1929 and married Phil in 1949. They adopted their first child in 1954 when he was three months old and adopted their last set of two older brothers in 1982. She retired after 12 years from her drapery business, “Marilyn’s Draperies,” in Minnesota. Her husband retired from FMC in Minneapolis after working for 35 years. In 1984 they moved to Florida with five of their children still at home. Marilyn Diskerud wants everyone to know that “if my book encourages even one family to adopt a child or two, especially those who are older children, then all my efforts in writing this book will have been rewarded. Everyone needs a loving family.” |
From the Back Cover:
Whether it’s the joy-filled decision to welcome a child into your home or the difficult decision to place your child in another’s arms—adoption is making the choice to love unselfishly and unconditionally. Loved by Choice offers a clear and uplifting look at adoption through true stories told from virtually every perspective. Birth parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, adopted children, families enhanced by special needs, interracial, and foreign adoptions are among those who share their joys and difficulties. The collection is a tender celebration of adoption, led by those who understand it best. About the Author: Susan Horner compiled, edited, and wrote many of the stories for Loved by Choice. She has written for Focus on the Family Club House Jr., Club House, Breakaway, and the Focus on the Family magazine. Kelly Fordyce Martindale is a freelance writer and a publisher of a monthly consumer paper. She has written for Woman’s Day, Today’s Christian Woman, and many other women’s magazines and newspapers. She has contributed stories to other compilations and is working on a parenting book. She lives in Frederick, Colorado, with her husband and two of her four children. |
From the Dust Jacket:
What would a liberal, white, civil rights law professor have to learn about race? When Sharon Rush adopted an African American girl, she quickly discovered the need to throw out old assumptions and start learning all over again. This is the moving, heartfelt memoir of a mother and daughter’s loving relationship that opened the author’s eyes to the harsh realities of the American racial divide. Only by living with her daughter through day-to-day encounters and life passages did Rush learn that racism is far more devastating to Blacks than most Whites can ever imagine. Some of the stories are funny, others are sad, a few are almost unbelievable. But they are all poignant because they illustrate how insightful a little Black girl of three can be about race and justice. The stories also recount the author’s struggle, as her daughter has matured, to come to grips with her own growing awareness of racism in America. With love and spirituality, Rush and her daughter live a deeply joyous life, and have become increasingly active in working publicly and privately against racism. Readers who journey across the color line with the author and her daughter will witness a real-life encounter with racism and come away with a deeper understanding of its persistence. About the Author: Sharon E. Rush is a civil rights lawyer and the Irving Cypen Professor of Law at the University of Florida. She has been studying race for over fifteen years and currently lives with her daughter in Gainesville. |
From the Publisher:
This is the story of a group of nine adoptive parents who came together for mutual support to look at the effects on themselves of living with traumatised children. They based their task on a form of research known as co-operative inquiry. The group describes their journey from setting up the inquiry through the process of exploring the effects of their children’s trauma on themselves and their families, to their development into a cohesive support group and the sense of empowerment this has brought to their lives. The book includes: a brief survey of attachment and trauma in relation to adoption; highly personal accounts of what it is like living with a traumatised child; a description of the inquiry process and step-by-step guidance on how others can set up their own “co-operative inquiry” group; and insights into the impact the inquiry has had on participants and their families two years on. Written with courage, honesty and humour, this book should inspire and encourage any adoptive parents who are struggling to take control of their situation. It should also closely inform new developments in adoption support. And as the first piece of research carried out with rather than on adopters, it provides a model for research in this field that brings real hope of reaching some difficult and empowering truths about adoption. About the Author: For reasons of confidentiality, all participants in the co-operative inquiry wish to remain anonymous and Megan Hirst is a collective pseudonym chosen by the group. |
Loving and Raising Asia gives an intimate look into the lives of a courageous young black southern couple who possessed enough love to see through the complicated entanglements of race in America to offer their love to a white infant even before she exited the womb. This is a true story of a woman who becomes unable to conceive a natural child because of multiple pregnancy complications. And, indeed, it may well have been that this situation heightened her inherent urge for motherhood—an impulse that led her to adoption as a practical option. But she finds that even in adoption there was an unexpected surprise when her adopted bi-racial baby turns out to be Caucasian. She learns that the young white birth mother used the classic culprit by claiming her pregnancy was he result of her being raped by a black man. |
From the Back Cover:
Considering adoption? Loving Journeys Guide to Adoption can give you the answers you need to make decisions that are right for you. Part One is a thorough introduction to the world of adoption, explaining general requirements and procedures. Part Two is a directory containing detailed listings of hundreds of adoption resources: private adoption agencies, adoption attorneys, American adoption programs, international adoption programs (including maps and country profiles), adoptive parents support groups, and more. With this preparation, the adoption process can be a loving journey. |
From the Back Cover:
A book for stepparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, foster parents, godparents—and anyone else who loves a child born to someone else. If you’ve picked up this book, you are probably facing one of the greatest challenges of your life... Help has arrived. |
From the Dust Jacket:
“What a lucky girl!” Everybody who has adopted a daughter from China has heard that one. And every parent has said, or thought, in reply: “No, we’re the lucky ones.” This anthology sets out to explain why people who have adopted children from China feel as though they’ve won the lottery. Since the late 1980s, as many as 7,000 Chinese-born girls (and a few boys!) have been adopted annually and now live in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. They are officially orphans, victims of a rigorous birth control policy limiting most families to one child. The story of these children is compelling as a narrative of hope and optimism but it may also become a story of dislocation and crisis of identity. These baby immigrants add unusual texture to the lives of the families they join—they come here not by choice but by someone else’s design. The memoirs collected in The Lucky Ones deal with infertility, moving to acceptance of a multiracial family, anticipating the adoption, reflecting during the trip to China and, at last, grappling with an odd destiny—turning terrible beginnings into happy endings. About the Author: Ann Rauhala is a former columnist and foreign editor of The Globe and Mail, now director of newspapers at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. With contributions from Jasmine Akbarali, Jasmine Bent, Cindy Boates, Lia Calderone, Julie Chan, Denise Davy, Sarah Giddens, Havard Gould, Heidi Hatch, Patricia Hluchy, Douglas Hood, Tess Kalinowski, Margaret Lawson, Glen McGregor, Lilian Nattel, Susan Olding, Shelley Page, Sonja Smits, Evan Solomon, and Steve Whan. |
Willebrandt is best remembered as the Assistant Attorney General under Warren Harding. Following her divorce, she adopted her daughter, Dorothy Rae, then two years old, as an unmarried woman in 1925. Although she never remarried, she managed to pursue her career and raise her daughter with the help of friends and her parents. Willebrandt also had two sisters whom her parents had adopted, one of whom Mabel herself, as a young teenager, had brought into their home and insisted the family adopt in order to rescue her from a troubled home. |
From the Back Cover (paperback edition):
ALEX SMITH AND HIS EIGHT PERSONALITIES WERE TRAPPED IN A WORLD OF UNFATHOMABLE EVIL... When Carole Smith and her husband decided to take on a foster child that no one else would have they knew ten-year-old Alex would be difficult. But nothing had prepared them for the unruly, self-destructive boy who stormed into their lives. Alone with Alex during the day, Carole was baffled by his infantile tantrums and violent, self-hating behaviors. Exasperated, she tried relating to him as the two-year-old he appeared to be, and finally, a door to Alex’s mind began to open. UNTIL HE ENTERED THE “MAGIC CASTLE” AND FOUND THE KEY TO HIS FREEDOM With the help of psychiatrist Dr. Steven Kingsbury, Alex’s tormented mind revealed a host of personalities, each born in a horrifying episode of Alex’s past—each carrying a memory too powerful for his conscious mind to handle. As the personalities came forth in the safety of Alex’s inner, secret castle, they unleashed stories of abandonment, brainwashing, and sexual abuse by those Alex trusted the most. In the spellbinding tradition of Sybil and When Rabbit Howls, here is a fascinating true story of the human mind; of innocence shattered by inhuman cruelty; and ultimately of love’s power to transform fragments into wholeness—tragedy into triumph. About the Author: Carole Smith is a former schoolteacher who lives with her family in Massachusetts. |
From the Publisher:
In Make Me a Mother, acclaimed memoirist Susanne Antonetta adopts an infant from Seoul, South Korea. After meeting their six-month-old son, Jin, at the airport—an incident made memorable when Susanne, so eager to meet her son, is chased down by security—Susanne and her husband learn lessons common to all parents, such as the lack of sleep and the worry and joy of loving a child. They also learn lessons particular to their own family: not just how another being can take over your life but how to let an entire culture in, how to discuss birth parents who gave up a child, and the tricky steps required to navigate race in America. In the end, her relationship with her son teaches Susanne to understand her own troubled childhood and to forgive and care for her own aging parents. Susanne comes to realize how, time and time again, all families have to learn to adopt one another. About the Author: Susanne Antonetta (also known as Susanne Paola) is the author of the memoirs A Mind Apart and A Body Toxic, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as the poetry collections Bardo, Petitioner, Glass, and, most recently, The Lives of the Saints. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, Best American Essays, and other publications. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband and son. Compiler’s Note: Portions of the book previously appeared in Fourth Genre (“Dark Matter”); Image (“Hosts”); Orion (“As Flies” and “Improbable Gifts”); Seneca Review (“Nine Lives”); The New Republic (“No Words Lecture Hall” [poem]); and The New York Times (“Who Is This Child, What Will He Be Next?”). “Hosts” was also included in a list of “Notable Essays in 2010” (selected by Robert Atwan) in the 2011 edition of The Best American Essays (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses (2012, Norton). |
Adopted persons face challenges their entire lives as they struggle to answer the mo basic question: Who am !? The hope of open adoption is that adopted children will develop stronger identities if they have the opportunity to develop healthy ongoing relationships with their families of origin. Making Room in Our Hearts offers an intimate look at how these relationships evolve over time, with real-life stories from families who have experienced open adoption first-hand. This book helps both adoptive and birth parents address their fears and concerns, while offering them the support to put the child’s psychological and spiritual needs at the center of adoption. Based on interviews with more than one hundred adopted children, birth and adoptive parents, extended families, professionals and experts, the book is an effective and invaluable resource for those considering open adoption, those experiencing it and professionals in the field. Openness has altered the landscape of adoption, and Making Room in Our Hearts will help us catch up to the reality that is open adoption today. About the Author: Mickey Duxbury, MFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has practiced in the Bay Area for over twenty years. She specializes in pre- and post-adoption education and counseling and helping families successfully navigate open relationships. She has facilitated adoption support groups for eight years and is an adoptive parent herself. |
From the Back Cover:
Children who are adopted have predictable and often unspoken concerns about themselves and how they joined their families. In this wise and timely guide, Lois Melina, author of the classic manual Raising Adopted Children, helps parents anticipate and respond to those concerns in ways that build self-esteem. Through sample conversations, reassuring advice, and age-specific activities parents will find answers to such questions as: — When should I give my child the letter her birthmother wrote? — How do I share information that might upset my child? — How can I know when my child is wondering about adoption? — What should I tell school personnel about my child’s history? What about family and friends? — How can I be sure we talk about adoption enough, but not too much? Whether parents adopted traditionally, as stepparents, or through donor insemination, surrogacy, or in vitro fertilization, Making Sense of Adoption will open the door to a lifetime of growth and understanding for adoptive families. About the Author: Lois Ruskai Melina, author of Raising Adopted Children, editor of Adopted Child newsletter, and freelance magazine journalist, has been writing about adoption since 1981. A frequent speaker at conferences and workshops across the country, she resides in Moscow, Idaho, with her husband and their two children. By the Same Author: Raising Adopted Children: A Manual For Adoptive Parents (1986); Adoption: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (1987, Routledge); and The Open Adoption Experience: Complete Guide for Adoptive and Birth Families—From Making the Decision to the Child’s Growing Years (with Sharon Kaplan Roszia; 1993, HarperPerennial). |
Very short autobiographical essay detailing births of children and deaths and adopting a child. Along the way the Guests move to a larger home to accommodate their growing family. From the Dust Jacket: “There is no pleasanter sight within the front door of any man’s castle than the strewn and disordered evidences that children are there,” writes Edgar Guest, in this very human story on making of the house a HOME. The spiritual give-and-take that is the essence of Mr. Guest’s philosophy of life shines as joyously from this intimate narrative of his own home-building as from the pages of his books of verse, that are treasured in half a million American homes to-day. His publishers wish that they might put this little story of the inception and growth of Edgar Guest’s home-of-his-own in the hands of every young couple to be married in these United States this year. They feel that you, who will read these pages, will understand why. The story carries the message of hope and faith. “Our home is not yet completed,” writes Mr. Guest. “We hope to go forward together, changing and improving it. To-morrow shall see something that was not there yesterday. But through sun and shade, through trial and through days of ease and peace, it is our hope that something of our best shall still remain within its walls.” Compiler’s Note: This book is in the public domain and may be read online. The Guests adopted a three-year-old girl named Marjorie following the death of their first child, also a girl, at the age of 13 months. The story is related matter-of-factly and reminded me of nothing so much as when one might obtain another pet to replace one that died suddenly and unexpectedly. “‘I must have another little girl,’ [his wife] sobbed night after night. ‘I must have another little girl!’ ... We heard of a little girl who was to be put out for adoption; she was of good but unfortunate parents. We proposed to adopt her.” Guest’s language here is, like Marjorie’s birth parents, “unfortunate.” Guest extols the virtue of adoption (“I have heard many arguments against adopting children, but I have never heard a good one. ... To childless couples everywhere I would say with all the force I can employ, adopt a baby!”), but he frames it more in terms of the benefits that can accrue to the adopters than to the adoptee (“If you would make glorious the home you are building; if you would fill its rooms with laughter and contentment; if you would make your house more than a place in which to eat and sleep; if you would fill it with happy memories and come yourselves into a closer and more perfect union, adopt a baby! Then, in a year or two, adopt another. He who spends money on a little child is investing it to real purpose; and the dividends it pays in pride and happiness and contentment are beyond computation.”). The Guests can be credited for adopting an older child, but he exemplifies his generation (he was born in 1881) when he relates that they kept Marjorie’s adoptive status secret (“Our friends were asked never to refer in her presence to the fact that she was adopted. As far as we were concerned it was dismissed from our minds. She was three years old when she was born to us, and from then on we were her father and her mother.”). Sadly, Marjorie Ellen Meagher Guest’s misfortunes did not end when she was adopted by the Guests after being “put out for adoption”; she would die little more than 10 years later, at the age of 14. |
From the Publisher:
Mamadona: Heartbreaking Cry of a Child is the controversial story of a young boy’s adoption; a story that brings with it many other questions of human nature and social inequality and discrimination. David is adopted from Malawi when he is still only a baby and brought to live in England with a well-known, affluent family [pop-star Madonna and her husband]. When the story catches the attention of the world’s media, he is instantly catapulted into the public eye and, some may say, into the firing line. |
From Booklist:
The Tems’ extraordinary autobiographical novella, “The Man on the Ceiling,” garnered an unprecedented number of major horror and fantasy awards. In this set of loosely connected essays and semi-fictional discourses, the husband-and-wife horror-writing duo supplements the novella with sober meditations on aging, loss, and the writing process. Except as illustrative digressions from a given autobiographical topic, there are few actual stories in the volume, and, indeed, the Tems repeatedly emphasize that “everything we’re telling you here is true.” Yet certain events and predicaments dance in and out of each chapter, among them the suicidal death of the couple’s eldest adopted son and the penchant for storytelling that afflicts the members of the Tems’ extended family. The titular specter is a recurring metaphor for the dark, fleetingly glimpsed shadows that linger in the background of daily life and quicken fear. The Tems’ assemblage of brooding, often surrealistic prose experiments defies easy categorization but succeeds as compelling, perhaps compulsory, reading for true horror fans. —Carl Hays. About the Author: Award-winning author, poet, and playwright Melanie Tem is the author of fourteen published novels. Her works have won, among many accolades, the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award. Dan Simmons called her “the literary successor to Shirley Jackson,” and readers and reviewers consistently rave about her deeply involved stories of the terrors that haunt families. Steve Rasnic Tem has been called “a school of writing unto himself” (Joe R. Lansdale). His surreal stories have earned him comparisons to Franz Kafka, Dino Buzzati, Ray Bradbury, and Raymond Carver. He has also won the Bram Stoker award and been nominated for British Fantasy and World Fantasy awards for his short stories, novels, and collections. Together, Melanie and Steve won the Bram Stoker award for their multi-media collection Imagination Box, and won a Stoker, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy award for their novella “The Man on the Ceiling” (the only work ever to win all three). They live in Denver, CO, with the family they have made for themselves. Compiler’s Note: The titular novella was originally published in 2000 as a chapbook from American Fantasy Press in an edition limited to 500 copies. It was also published in an anthology of horror fiction called Poe’s Children, edited by Peter Straub (2008, Doubleday). |
March into My Heart is a poignant and inspiring story of family, adoption, and the search for the irreplaceable bond between a mother and daughter. Patty Lazarus was happily married and busy raising two sons. By all accounts she was a very lucky woman. But still, something was missing. Despite her love for her family, she felt a deep longing for the mother-daughter connection she’d always dreamed of. After enduring her mother’s tragic illness and untimely death, Patty knew that adding a girl to the family was the only way to ease the pain she felt. She and her husband set out on a four-year, arduous, complicated, and emotional journey through infertility, miscarriages, and adoption ending in a small town in rural Missouri where they would finally meet their new daughter as she came into the world. |
From the Dust Jacket:
This is a magnificent new biography of Martha Gellhorn, whose fearless reporting from the front made her a legend, and whose private life was often messy and volcanic. Her determination to be a war correspondent—and her conspicuous success—contributed to the breakdown of her already stormy marriage to Ernest Hemingway. Martha Gellhorn’s journalism tracks many of the flashpoints of the twentieth century. As a young woman, she was a witness of the suffering in America caused by the Depression. She risked her life in the Spanish Civil War, which was the subject of some of her finest writing. During the Second World War she covered the fall of Czechoslovakia and the Normandy Landings, the liberation of Dachau and the Nuremberg Trials. She reported from Vietnam and Israel; and at the age of 81 was covering the US invasion of Panama. All her life, Martha fought against injustice, and she always looked for the human story. She was influenced by two older women: her mother, who was a social reformer, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Her books of reporting and travel reflected her personality and her courage; her travels her shrewd and ironic eye; both were often very funny. Martha’s letters (many of which are quoted in this biography) are delightful—passionate, ebullient and no-holds-barred. Martha Gellhorn died in 1998. Caroline Moorehead knew Martha—not only as one of the circle who were invited to Martha’s London flat, but also because her parents (Alan Moorehead, the writer, and his wife, Lucy) were lifelong friends of Martha. This fascinating book reveals much about Martha’s life and loves, and is based on primary source material which no previous biographer has seen. About the Author: Caroline Moorehead’s biographies of Bertrand Russell and Iris Origo were both New York Times Notable Books. She lives in London. Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Chapter Eleven: Nothing with Mirrors (pp. 264-290), which covers, inter alia, Gellhorn’s adoption of her son, Sandy. |
Traveling to Mexico to adopt the three-month-old baby they’d been assigned, Mary Beth and Eugene de Ribeaux anticipated a dream come true. But it would be “mañana” many times over before they’d cross the border with their child six months later. Between the emotional high points of first receiving their baby and finally bringing him home, Eugene returned to work in the U.S., leaving his wife, a first-time mother with limited proficiency in Spanish; in lovely Puerto Vallarta with their new baby, Martin. Despite the precarious status of their adoption case and the pain of their separation, they remained determined to make the best of the situation. The Martin Chronicles originally a series of email messages Mary Beth sent home to family and friends’ records not only a mother’s growing love for her baby, but also a deepening appreciation of his native culture, as she learns lessons in Spanish and single motherhood, Mexican culture and culinaria, friendship and faith, patience and perseverance. Part travelogue, part adoption narrative, The Martin Chronicles follows the unfolding adventures of a new family in a foreign land with humor and freshness. Ultimately, it is an inspirational and triumphant story of overcoming hardships and reaping blessings along the way. |
From the Back Cover:
The Marvelous Journey Home tells the remarkable story of parents and children coming together. This fictionalized story, based on actual events, takes the reader through a roller coaster of emotions as parents seek their child, who longs for the chance to have a family and travel home to a faraway place. With scenes situated from orphanages in small, remote Russian villages, to Moscow, and finally on to America, “the fairytale land,“ the reader is taken on a journey around the world, home again, and eventually, even far beyond. Filled with hope and disappointment, love and loss, happiness and despair, The Marvelous Journey Home draws the reader along by the heartstrings to an unexpected destination. Home is found in distant places, peace is found in unlikely circumstances, and family is always what matters most. About the Author: John M. Simmons is president and co-owner of White Knight Fluid Handling, LLC, a company that designs, manufactures and sells components for the distribution of acids and other chemicals. In addition to The Marvelous Journey Home, he has written several short stories, which are available from the web site, www.whiteknightpublish.com. Simmons is currently working on his next novel, a sequel to his first. “There was just so much more to tell...” he said. The author lives with his wife, Amy, and nine children in Kamas, Utah, in a small mountain valley about 35 miles cast of Salt Lake City. By the Same Author: To Sing Frogs (2013). |
From the Dust Jacket:
This is the third and concluding volume in Robert Peel’s monumental biography of the founder of Christina Science. Like the first two volumes (Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery and Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial), it does not assume the reader’s prior familiarity with the subject, but allows him to become acquainted with this remarkable woman at a significant stage of her career as though he were coming upon her for the first time. The last years of Mary Baker Eddy’s life (1892-1910) witnessed the triumph of Christian Science over some of the harshest criticism and severest crises that the new religious movement had yet encountered. In those years Mrs. Eddy formed The Mother Church in Boston, saw her movement spread to Europe and around the world, wrestled with the problem of spiritual authority in an increasingly secular society, and in her eighty-eighth year founded the Christian Science Monitor. During the same period, she faced lawsuits, personal attacks and assorted onslaughts by disaffected followers, the press, hostile biographers, and that spokesman for the age, Mark Twain. But even Twain’s mordant cynicism could not entirely nullify the incongruous admiration that flashed out in the midst of his strictures and led him to describe her as “the most interesting woman that had ever lived, and the most extraordinary.” The closing years of Mrs. Eddy’s life are fascinating in themselves and round out Robert Peel’s brilliantly detailed portrait of a great religious leader. In addition, this volume examines in new perspective the nature of Christian authority in an age of science. About the Author: Robert Peel has had a varied career as college professor, counterintelligence officer, newspaperman, historian, literary critic, and editorial consultant to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. Born in England and educated at various schools in three countries, he was graduated from Harvard with highest honors and remained there to study and teach for six more years. After service in World War II he became an editorial writer on The Christian Science Monitor and entered upon a new career as author. With the publication of his book Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture in 1958 he turned his attention more and more to the history and significance of Christian Science in today’s culture. His book Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age was published in 1987 by Harper & Row. Compiler’s Note: In the words of the author, “Nothing in Mrs. Eddy’s life has been more astonishing to most people than her adoption in 1888 of a forty-one-year-old ex-homeopathic doctor as her son. This has been considered all the more remarkable because she had an actual son of almost the same age—living, to be sure, with a family of his own in the far-off Black Hills of South Dakota.” According to Peel, Eddy’s natural-born son was taken from her and placed in the care of others not long after his birth due to her inability to properly care for him herself, and they never saw one another again until the boy had grown into a 35-year-old man with a wife and four children. In a sense, then, her experience reflects that of both a birth and adoptive mother. |
From the Back Cover:
Does God really hear and answer very specific prayers? Can He really bring us from the depths of despair and bless us beyond belief? The answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”! This story details the journey of one couple from the agonizing despair of infertility to the joy of open adoption. • Are you facing infertility? • Is someone you love walking through this devastating ordeal? • Have you considered open adoption, but still have uncertainties? • Are you facing an unplanned pregnancy and considering your options? • Are there trials in your life that just seem impossible to overcome? As you read this book, you will walk with the author through the darkness of disbelief, sorrow, anger, bitterness and hopelessness. You will be amazed as the pieces of a puzzle emerge and God miraculously joins them together. You will rejoice as the darkness fades and joy arrives with the dawn. You will marvel at the masterpiece. And your faith will be strengthened. About the Author: Bobbi Grubb has shared this amazing personal story at speaking engagements for many years. The testimony has touched the lives of countless infertile couples, women in unplanned pregnancies, and others seeking encouragement. Bobbi has been involved in adoption counseling for ten years and serves on the board of directors of a crisis pregnancy center. She stays busy homeschooling her two sons. Bobbi and her husband, Steve, will celebrate 25 years of marriage in 2008. |
From the Dust Jacket:
In her extraordinary career as a prison reformer, Miriam Van Waters worked tirelessly to champion the cause of socially disadvantaged and delinquent women. Yet, it was her sensational battle to retain the superintendency of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women in 1949 that made her a national cause célebre, triumphantly defending herself against an array of political and ideological enemies. In this compelling biography, Estelle Freedman moves beyond the controversy to reveal a remarkable woman whose success rested upon the power of her own charismatic leadership. She touched thousands of people—from Boston Brahmins to alcoholics, prostitutes, and desperate criminals, to her devoted prison staff and volunteers. Through her, we meet a wealth of characters, including Eleanor Roosevelt, and see the realities of life in the early decades of this century for a single mother of an adopted daughter. Drawing from Van Waters’ diaries, letters, and personal papers, Freedman recreates a complex personal life, unveiling the disparity between the confident public persona and the agonized private soul. Van Waters struggled through family tragedy, depression, and ill health but found solace in her work, her friends and supporters, and in the deeply romantic relationship she shared with her benefactor, Geraldine Thompson. A compelling tale in its own right, Van Waters’ life also supplies a missing chapter in the history of American women. Combining a deep faith in the social power of motherhood with professional efforts to secure equal justice for women and children, Van Waters and her generation provide a legacy for contemporary women activists. With the power and elegance of a novel, Maternal Justice illuminates this historical context, casting light on the social welfare tradition, on women’s history, on the American feminist movement, and on the history of sexuality. About the Author: Estelle B. Freedman, is professor of history at Stanford University, author of Their Sisters Keepers and co-author with Join D’Emilio of Intimate Matters. |
From the Dust Jacket:
This is a mother’s powerful and moving story of her adopted son’s triumph over adversity. Matthew was born with a face and body so disfigured that he was abandoned at birth and left to what everyone assumed would be an early death. He had a gaping hole instead of a mouth, so feeding was near impossible, and his internal disorders required a series of operations while he was still a baby. But no one had bargained for Matthew’s spirit. He survived, and blossomed into a little boy with hopes and dreams far beyond the hospital walls where he spent his early years. At the age of seven, one of his dreams was realised when he found himself a mum, dad, brothers and sisters. Four years later, when his struggles were publicised nationally, Matthew inspired such admiration and sympathy in the British public that they raised £100,000 to send him to the United States for help from the Boy David surgeon, Jan Jackson. The story has a further twist, for the family that adopted Matthew is both unusual and remarkable. Fred and Christine Learoyd are simple working people with three grown-up children of their own; but over the years they have added six severely physically and mentally handicapped children to their brood. The Learoyds dote on their family, but life has not always been easy for them, and there are some episodes in this book which Christine found painful to recall. There were times when those around her were unkind and even spiteful to her and her family, but she and her husband persevered, sometimes against enormous odds, to do the best for their children. Today, after many adventures—some joyful, some sad—they have moved from their home county of Kent, where Fred was a miner, to the depths of Wales, where they have already become a much-loved part of the community. Now, for the first time, Christine Learoyd tells the story of her very special son and of the British people at their most kind and generous. About the Author: Christine Learoyd was born in 1941 in Canterbury, Kent, to a working-class family. The memory of her deeply unhappy childhood made her promise that when she had children of her own they would never have to suffer the tension and trauma of parental fights and arguments. At the age of seventeen she trained as a nurse at the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital in Margate. It was there that she met her husband, Fred, who was a regular visitor to his sick mother, a patient in Christine’s ward. That same year they were married, and two years later, after they had moved to Germany where Fred was serving in the Army, she gave birth to her first child, Kevin, who was followed by Stephen and Lorraine. Today Christine is a grandmother four times over and a devoted mother to her adopted and fostered handicapped children. Jane Owen was born in London and brought up near Windsor. After a year spent working as a teacher at Clyde School in Australia, made famous by the film Picnic at Hanging Rock; she read Late Ancient and Medieval History at London University and subsequently became a journalist. Almost every national newspaper has published her work on subjects as diverse as the English legal system and St Valentine’s Day, and she has written several books. She is joint winner of the Van den Berghs and Jurgens reporting award. Today she is Associate Editor of dx, the Daily Express magazine, and writes the Daily Express gardening column. |
From the Publisher:
God has sent us a little angel dressed as a dirty, tiny boy. He has so much to teach us of empathy and pure joy. It is our goal and most important role as his FOREVER Mom and Dad to love, nurture, and guide this little angel into a confident, caring man. About the Author: Tracy Pillow works part-time at Dutilh United Methodist Church and over-time at home with her husband and four kids. Her husband’s military career keeps the family moving to new places and adventures every few years. She currently resides in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania with her husband, passel of kids, one goldfish, and a turtle. By the Same Author: Bharat Mata: As Humanity Unfolds in Mother India (2001) and Bringing Our Angel Home (2002). |
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