From the Dust Jacket: Are you in the process of adoption? Do you know a family that has adopted a child? In After the Adoption, Elizabeth Hormann shows how to nurture relationships in the adoptive family. Writing from experience, she helps you and your family bond intimately with your child. She highlights the joys of adopting children at various ages and prepares you for possible problems. This insightful book carefully considers aspects of adopting children at every age from infancy through the teen years. Among the topics discussed are:

• meeting the emotional needs of children at various age levels

• understanding how you form attachments

• preparing your immediate and extended family for accepting a new child

• adapting to special adoptions, such as interracial, international, and sibling groups

• caring for your handicapped child

• the pros and cons of private and agency adoptions

Elizabeth Hormann shows how to create ties of love that are strong enough to withstand the pressures of adjustment. Her practical, creative guidelines will encourage every member of the family to reach out in love to the adopted child. After the Adoption will help parents, grandparents, social workers, therapists, and pastoral counselors build loving relationships with adopted children.

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About the Author: Elizabeth Hormann, a graduate of Boston College, received her Ed.M. from Harvard University. She writes extensively for magazines. A single parent, she lives with her four “homemade” children and one adopted child in Germany.

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By the Same Author: Breastfeeding an Adopted Baby and Relactation (2007, La Leche League International).

From the Publisher: You’ve done it! After months or even years of prayers, dreams and effort your child is finally home. Now it’s time for happily ever after. And yet the days and months ahead will quite likely stretch you in ways you weren’t expecting.

Using Scripture and stories of her own adopted children, Michelle Gardner helps you anticipate these challenges and gives you tools to help you cope. In your adoption journey, how can the Lord be most glorified? It may be through a path you would never have chosen. Michelle asks you to consider what God can do to work in your life, your child’s life, and the lives of everyone watching to bring glory to Himself.

After the Dream Comes True explores: Emotions that might surprise you; Why you got involved with adoption; First days at home; Setting boundaries and establishing routines; Birth-parent issues; Spiritual issues; If the dream turns into a nightmare; Ready to adopt again?; and many other important topics.

As families lovingly and obediently welcome adopted children into their hearts and homes, there are many issues with which they need to deal. After the Dream Comes True helps families consider these issues from a scriptural perspective and challenges families to see adoption as an opportunity to learn to trust and obey.

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About the Author: Michelle Gardner, the Director of Kingdom Kids Adoption Ministries, is a graduate of Multnomah Bible College. She and her husband Steve were missionaries with CBInternational for several years. Steve is now Pastor to Children and Families at Fourth Memorial Church in Spokane, Washington. They have six children, three of whom are adopted.

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By the Same Author: Adoption As a Ministry, Adoption As a Blessing (2003).

Adoption offers a powerful testimony of grace in a world of unwanted pregnancies and on-demand abortion. But no one said adoption is easy. As an adoptive parent and pastor who has counseled many adoptive parents, Brian Borgman knows there is another side to adoption that we are often reluctant to talk about. Parenting is always a challenge, but parenting an adopted child can have some special challenges. Adoptive parents can experience much heartache and even guilt with their adopted children. Many suffer in silence. Borgman writes with a burden to minister to those who are struggling. After They Are Yours: The Grace and Grit of Adoption talks transparently and redemptively about the often unspoken problems adoptive parents face. Combining personal experience, biblical wisdom, and a heart for people, Borgman recalls the humbling and difficult lessons God has taught him and his wife. This is not a success story, rather it’s a story of struggles and failures set in the broader context of a God who is gracious and continually teaches us the meaning of adoption. What do you do when it’s hard to hope? Here is a story of adoption that’s real, raw, redemptive, and edifying.

From the Dust Jacket: Orlando basketball executive Pat Williams has known the thrill of victory and the agony of divorce—and when he says there’s magic in the air, he’s not just whistling Disney. He speaks with an unshakable faith in God and in the future.

In Ahead of the Game: The Pat Williams Story, the senior executive vice president of the National Basketball Association’s Orlando Magic tells of encounters with big-name players, swinging multi-million-dollar deals, and living through nail-biting playoffs action during his rise from minor league wunderkind to general manager of an NBA championship team.

Woven into the story are candid details of the crushing breakup of his twenty-four-year marriage to the woman with whom he had parented eighteen children (fourteen of them adopted) and written books on reviving marital relationships.

Through the turbulence of his personal life and the ups and downs of his professional career, Williams has found strength in the God who is the "God of Second Chances,” the God who brought him out of the ashes of personal heartache and defeat and presented him with a true gift—a new wife and a nineteenth child. In this book, he distills ten principles for success from his experiences while baring heart and soul in a warts-and-all account that will challenge and inspire. Sports fans and anyone who strives for a winning life can learn how to live Ahead of the Game from Williams.

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About the Author: Pat Williams is senior executive vice president of the Orlando Magic and is a popular motivational speaker. He helped found the Orlando Magic and then guided it, as general manager, from an expansion club to one of the top teams in the NBA in just a few short years.

Before taking the helm in Orlando, Williams was general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers for twelve years, ‚including its 1983 championship season. He was also general manager of the Atlanta Hawks and the Chicago Bulls, a post he took at the age of twenty-nine. He is the author of numerous books, including Making Magic, Go for the Magic, and The Magic of Teamwork.

James D. Denney is a collaborative writer who has worked on numerous best-sellers, including Reggie White: In the Trenches with Reggie White, The City on a Hill with Michael Reagan, A Model for a Better Future with supermodel Kim Alexis, The Power of Story with Leighton Ford, and The Magic of Teamwork with Pat Williams.

From the Back Cover: He was an up-and-coming placekicker for the San Diego Chargers, earning a reputation as one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history. But then a little-understood intestinal illness turned Rolf Benirschke’s life upside down.

Alive & Kicking is the remarkable account of a young man who battled back against insurmountable odds. Despite four major abdominal surgeries that left him near death and wearing an ostomy pouch, he surprised his medical doctors and his Charger teammates by returning to the NFL for seven more seasons.

This is a story of fear and faith, of courage and the love of family members. But most of all, it is a story about the indomitable spirit that lives in all of us. If you are looking for encouragement—especially if you have Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis or are struggling with ostomy surgery—Alive & Kicking is just the book for you.

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About the Author: Rolf Benirschke is a former placekicker for the San Diego Chargers, having played in the National Football League for ten seasons from 1977-1986. He retired with sixteen team records and as the third most-accurate kicker in NFL history. Today, he is in the financial services business with Eastman Benirschke Financial Group, and he is a sought-after inspirational speaker around the country as well.

Rolf remains active in the community and serves as a National Trustee of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) and as a spokesman for ConvaTec, a Bristol-Myers Squibb company. He is also a long-time supporter of the United Ostomy Association, the United Way, and the San Diego Zoo.

Rolf and his wife, Mary, are the proud parents of four children, two of whom they adopted from Russia: Erik, Kari, Timmy, and Ryan. They live in the San Diego area.

Mike Yorkey attended La Jolla High School with Rolf, and served as an editor of Focus on the Family magazine for eleven years. Most recently, he is the author or co-author of seventeen books. He and his wife, Nicole, reside in Encinitas, California, with their two children, Patrick and Andrea.

This ebook gives you practical tips on how to go through the process of adopting a child. This is relevant for anybody who wants to adopt a child. This is a complete guide providing detailed information on all aspects of adopting a child. Domestic and international adoption is covered along with the pros and cons of all alternatives. Costs and other practical advice is given to help you decide the right course for you if considering adoption. Also legal issues and other aspects of different adoption processes are covered in detail. Guidelines of what requirements must be met depending on whether the adoption is domestic or international including what to expect when dealing with specific countries or jurisdictions. An all around guidebook of what to expect and all the various options available when it comes to adopting a child.

Are you thinking about adopting a child? There are a lot of things that you need to know if you are serious. All About Adoption is a no fluff detailed book on everything you need to know about how to adopt a child, the cost of adoption, the adoption process, and other topics including babies for adoption and international adoption agencies. Here is a quick snapshot of the table of contents:

All About Adoption Agencies
Resources for Adopted Individuals
The Adoption Process: An Overview
Children for Adoption
Choosing An Adoption Agency
Closed Adoption
Foster Child Adoption
International Adoptions
Is Adoption Right for You
Typical Open Adoption

So whether you are very interested in adopting a child, or just curious about the adoption process itself, All About Adoption is a book you need to read. It also includes chapters on Foster Child adoption, open adoptions, and the best way to determine whether adoption is right for you or not. A great book and a phenomenal price. Check it out today!

A variation on the traditional baby book, with additional sections unique to the circumstances of the adopted child. This is an old version of the concept; more contemporary variations are available under such rubrics as Our Chosen Child (2003) and My Family, My Journey (2007). Similar volumes specifically designed for children adopted from other countries are also generally available.

From the Back Cover: All Born Under The One Blue Sky is a compilation of stories and poems written by Irish people who have been touched in some way by adoption. The writers of this book, which includes birth parents, adopted persons and adoptive parents all have a connection with Cúnamh, an adoption agency. Turning the pages of this book will give you, the reader, an opportunity to experience what adoption has meant to these writers and how it has in some way shaped their lives.

You will be touched by the expression of the heartfelt emotions of the writers, each sharing with honesty, courage and generosity their own deeply personal and unique experience of adoption. You will come away having a greater awareness of the complexities and challenges that adoption brings but, most of all, you will be reminded of the strength of love, the need to belong, and the great lengths people will go to find inner peace.

All Born Under The One Blue Sky has been published to acknowledge Cúnamh’s 100 years in existence.

From the Publisher: This all-inclusive guide will take you throughout the entire adoption process, from beginning to the end. This book will give you information significant for helping you decide if adoption is right for you, how to prepare for it, how to speed up the adoption process, what to expect during the adoption process, how to handle drawbacks you might encounter, and how to handle sensitive situations concerning your adopted child. There is also information given out for several reputable adoption agencies that can tirelessly assist you in finding a suitable child for you to adopt.

The Alternate Path is the story of one family’s adoption of two preschool Russian orphans. The true story begins with a description of the adoption process, then the book presents the issues encountered in adopting older children from another country. It is both humorous and touching. The problems encountered are not what is expected, and solutions come from everyday living and loving. Adoptions have become such a large part of family creation, yet little is written about the process and the challenges. One family’s real-life struggles provide an insight into what adoption can be and how a family can grow together.

From the Publisher: After her partner dies, Susan is faced with being a single parent for the first time at an age when most are contemplating grand-parenthood. The dream she gave up long ago of having her own family is realized, only to have it stripped from her as quickly as it was created, pulling her down into a spiral of depression. Always Kiss Me Goodnight is a personal story of her journey through loss and grief, and turning pain into passion.

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About the Author: Susan Adams is Founder and President of Q&A Family Emporium, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to recording and preserving the histories of children in foster care.

In extraordinary times men and women are called to do things that seem super human and beyond the extremes of the normal everyday life. This has been a look at “America’s First Family of Adoptions” in the United States of America. This brave couple Art and Loretta Piva charted a brand new course for all Americans by starting a new quest to adopt a child from a foreign country whom they could call their “OWN.” It is an example of how two people can truly make a difference in two boy’s lives that will forever be written in the annals of history as one of the most important adoptions of all time. These two people worked tirelessly long and hard to bring a richly rewarding experience to an otherwise not so well off couple of boys who’s lives at birth were tragically and hideously brought forth in a “HELL” that few humans could or should ever have to see in this life.

From the Publisher: The books in this series contain reprints of articles, excerpts from books, addresses on current issues, and studies of social trends in the United States and other countries. There are six separately bound numbers in each volume, all of which are usually published in the same calendar year. Numbers one through five are each devoted to a single subject, providing background information and discussion from various points of view and concluding with a subject index and comprehensive bibliography that lists books, pamphlets, and abstracts of additional articles on the subject. The final number of each volume is a collection of recent speeches, and it contains a cumulative speaker index. Books in the series may be purchased individually or on subscription.

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “The Adoption Maze” by Kim Clark and Nancy Shute, from U.S. News & World Report [Mar 12, 2001] (pp. 5-11) and “The Battle to Be a Parent” by Richard Tate, from The Advocate [Jan 30, 2001] (pp. 143-149).

From the Back Cover: American Family takes one family’s heartbreaking personal story about racism and homophobia and turns it into a much-needed catalyst to reopen the dialogue about racial prejudice in America. It is a book for:

• Anyone who cares about understanding and healing racism in America

• Anyone who loves someone who has faced discrimination or racial prejudice

• Any parent who has had to fight the system to get their child treated fairly

• Anyone who has faced discrimination or racial prejudice themselves

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About the Author: Barbara Waugh, Ph.D., is the author of Soul in the Computer: Story of a Corporate Revolutionary. She recently retired from Hewlett-Packard after 25 years, where most recently she was Director of University Relations for Africa and the Middle East and for women globally.

Stacy Cusulos, M.Div., is a consultant on work force diversity, the author of two published case studies examining issues of race and gender, one of which was filmed, and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

From the Publisher: This is the story of one family, one of the many families that compose the character of America. For typical Americans, the experiences of our family reflect the experiences of their own, and those of their neighbors. It is the story of two people who met in college, fell in love, and married. It is a story about education, about how the college experience was once much different than it is today. It is a story about racial discrimination, of how despicable things were, of our experiences related to the integration of Little Rock Central High school, of my refusal to accept an offered job as personal secretary to the infamous Governor Orville Faubus. It is a telling of our difficulties in raising a gifted child—a child that failed the seventh grade, was skipped into high school, left high school early to attend and graduate from college. It is celebration of the joys associated with the adoption of a child. It is the story of a family dog, of a little poodle we thought to be the world’s best and most amusing pet. It is a story about neighbors, about the many good, honest, charitable citizens of this great country. It relates one of the many tragedies of the Vietnam War; the story of a little brother, one of the great kids in America, who grew in front of our eyes, from grade school to high school, as a college student, as a cadet in Navy flight school, and died a hero killed in Vietnam. It tells of the untimely death of a wife, mother, and grandmother. Ultimately, it is a story of faith, of one family’s faith in the Creator that gives direction to every American story.

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About the Author: Cecil Eugene Reinke served forty years as a lawyer with the United States Army. He is now retired, working as a writer. He attended North Dakota State University from September 1952 to June 1955. He graduated from the University of North Dakota, School of Arts and Sciences, in 1956, and from the University of North Dakota School of Law, awarded the degree Juris Doctor, “with distinction,” in 1959. He served as an Associate Editor of the North Dakota Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He earned a Master of Science in Environmental Management, 1977, from the University of Houston at Clear Lake City, meriting election to Phi Kappa Phi. He served as a Senior Executive Fellow, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1986. He earned a Ph.D. at Portland State University, Portland, OR, School of Urban and Public Affairs, 1991.

From the Dust Jacket: In the past five years, some 200,000 single women in their thirties have chosen to become mothers. Do the numbers indicate isolated incidences of countercultural behavior or an emerging social trend?

Intrigued, the authors, both university professors in their thirties, embarked on a full-scale nationwide survey. The response was overwhelming, and the yield at once rich, surprising and moving. One hundred women here reveal their reasons and their feelings and give personal substance to the major issues—the decision to have a child while single; becoming a mother; adoption; artificial insemination; pregnancy; coping; the child’s welfare; the father’s rights; finances; physical support; psychological aspects; the responses of family, friends, and others; the effects of single parenting on the mother, child and, where applicable, the father. An appendix provides a comprehensive explanation in lay terms of the legal issues surrounding motherhood without marriage.

And Baby Makes Two, a clear presentation of an unremittingly controversial subject, neither endorses nor condemns but provides a balanced view of single-by-choice mothering.

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About the Author: Sharyne Merritt is Professor of Marketing at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a consultant in the areas of marketing and survey research. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science and was a Visiting Scholar at UCLA’s Graduate School of Management. She has lectured and published widely in the fields of marketing and social issues.

Linda Steiner is a Professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

From the Dust Jacket: “The touching, happy story of four adopted children who brought new meaning and love into the lives of a young couple.”

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About the Author: Frances Palmer, her husband and four children live on a farm in Lafayette, Indiana, and are active members of the Christian Reformed Church. The first half of her book appeared in abbreviated form in McCall’s and was enthusiastically received by its readers. The article was later condensed by Reader’s Digest. The complete story is now told for the first time in this inspiring book.

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Compiler’s Note: The McCall’s excerpt appeared in the April 1958 issue, and was titled “We Adopted Our Children Sight Unseen” in the table of contents. Interestingly, the feature was promoted on the cover as follows: THE “DEMON” CHILDREN WE ADOPTED / Could we learn to love them? / A mother’s story.

The Reader’s Digest titled its abridged version more sedately, as “And Now We Are Six.”

From the Dust Jacket: For one out of every five Jewish couples today, efforts to begin a family meet with unforeseen problems of infertility. Usually we don’t know who these couples are. Often they are people close to us, but we are unaware of the stress and pain they experience.

Michael Gold has been there himself, and so he understands the sensitivity, support, and information that infertile couples need. With a unique blend of rabbinic wisdom and personal insight, he gives them the courage to proceed and the knowledge with which to make informed decisions.

Rabbi Gold provides both rabbinic and practical evaluations of all the medical treatments for infertility now available, including in-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination by husband or by donor. A timely chapter also considers surrogate motherhood as an option for Jewish couples. Surprisingly, the author shows that traditional Jewish texts can provide helpful models and guidelines in dealing with this contemporary problem.

The father of two adopted children, Rabbi Gold stresses that adoption should be encouraged as a viable way of building Jewish families. He offers numerous suggestions for finding a baby or child and achieving successful adoption and calls upon Jewish communal workers and agencies to become actively involved in making such successes happen.

And Hannah Wept is a book that many people have been waiting for: infertile couples, would-be adoptive parents, rabbis, social workers, and the many others who need to understand and help if the Jewish community is to be fruitful and multiply to its fullest capacity.

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About the Author: A native of Los Angeles, Michael Gold left his graduate studies in mathematics at the University of California to enter rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was ordained as a rabbi in 1979 and assumed his first post at Congregation Sons of Israel in Nyack, New York. There the dynamic young rabbi developed an adult education program that received national recognition from United Synagogue. In Nyack he also met his wife, Evelyn, whom he married in 1979.

Since 1984, Michael Gold has been rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He writes and lectures frequently on infertility and adoption and contributes a column, “The Practical Rabbi,” to the B’nai B’rith International Jewish Monthly. Rabbi Gold is also a doctoral candidate in rabbinic literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

From the Back Cover: What is it like to be a foster parent?

Dealing honestly with her feelings, Pat Bilow shares the joys and frustrations she and her family experienced as they opened their home to foster children. On a more objective level, she incorporates interviews with other foster parents, social workers, and a judge of a juvenile court to give the reader a comprehensive and realistic picture of foster care. And Now We Are Four is a warm and amusing personal story; it is also an informative and challenging presentation of the many aspects of foster care.

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About the Author: Pat Bilow is a public relations writer for the United Way, a free-lance writer, and a member of the Toledo Press Club.

From the Dust Jacket: Kurt Vonnegut remains one of the most influential, controversial, and popular novelists of the twentieth century. Millions know him as a counterculture guru, antiwar activist, and satirist of American culture. But few outside his family and friends knew the full arc of his extraordinary life. How he made friends easily but always felt lonely, how he sold millions of books but never felt appreciated, how he described himself as a humanist but fought with humanity at large. As a former public relations man, he crafted his image carefully—the avuncular, curly-haired humorist—though he admitted, “I myself an a work of fiction.”

After five years of research, drawing on hundreds of interviews with Vonnegut, his children, and his friends and neighbors, and more than fifteen hundred letters, And So It Goes at last reveals one of literature’s most idiosyncratic, beloved, and enigmatic icons.

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About the Author: Charles J. Shields is the author of And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, the highly acclaimed, bestselling biography of Harper Lee, and I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers). He grew up in the Midwest and taught in a rural school in central Illinois for several years. He has been a reporter for public radio, a journalist, and the author of nonfiction books for young people. He and his wife live near Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Compiler’s Note: The phrase, “So it goes,” is employed by Vonnegut in his best-known novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as a narrative transition to another subject, as a memento mori, as comic relief, and to explain the unexplained; it appears 106 times.

See, also, Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (2012, Delacorte).

From the Dust Jacket: All her life Ann Kiemel had a persistent dream—an urgent longing. She wanted to be a mother. Through the years she filled many important roles and enjoyed many successes, climaxed by becoming the wife of Will Anderson, the man God brought into her life. But the fulfillment of her dream of motherhood was denied to her. Time after time she conceived, only to miscarry in the early stages of pregnancy. No treatment or surgery was able to give Ann and Will the gift of parenthood they so much desired.

At a particularly low point, a planned adoption fell through at the last moment. The heartbroken couple knelt in the beautifully equipped—but empty—nursery, and Ann heard her husband pray, “If you aren’t finished with us ... if there are still lessons to learn ... keep pouring on the heat.”

Ann was able to say “yes” to Will’s prayer, and a new era of commitment began in their lives. It was then that God sent a series of miracles that brought two adopted baby boys into their home, filling every corner with joy and the delights of parenthood.

Adoptions are always exciting, but when Ann and Will Anderson adopted two beautiful baby boys—just eleven months apart—those were adoptions with a difference! Ann and Will chose to bring their sons’ birth mothers to Idaho several weeks in advance of delivery; to get to know them well and to be known by them; to make sure that when the moment came for each woman to relinquish her baby, she would be making a mature, carefully considered decision.

In this heartwarming book, Ann tells—as only she can do, of the friendships formed ... of the time spent in Lamaze classes together ... of the hours in the delivery room ... and of the climactic moments when first Taylor, and later Brock, became truly her own.

A gift from the birth mothers. A gift from God. And with the gift came laughter!

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Compiler’s Note: This book was reissued in 1990 as an “updated and expanded edition” under the title Open Adoption: My Story of Love and Laughter, in which the author incorporated the stories of the adoption of her next two sons, Colson and Brandt. Individuals who have read this book and who posted reviews on Amazon.com in 2001 and 2004 noted that the author’s concept of “open” adoption was limited to allowing the birth mother to visit with the child within the first 12 to 18 months following the adoption, and then permanently cutting off all contact.

In addition to being a public speaker, she is the author of several other books, including an account of her courtship and marriage to her husband called I Gave God Time. About ten years after this book was published, Mr. Anderson died of cancer, leaving her to raise their four boys as a single parent.

This book takes a rather old fashioned and conservative approach to child rearing.

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About the Author: Kimberly Lawson-Reynolds was born on July 8, 1954 in Columbus, Ohio but takes great pride in being practically a native Floridian. Kim attended the University of South Florida where she was a foreign language major and has worked for a local school system for the past twenty-eight years. Kimberly is a member of the National Taxidermist Association and has practiced taxidermy—the true love of her life—since 1991. She is the wife of a doctor as well as a mother and grandmother. The author believes you can get everything in this life that you want by helping other people. It is her hope that her book will serve as a guide and a comfort to anyone that has ever struggled with their spirituality, known the devastation of the loss of a child, or encountered any of life’s adversities.

In the most simple, straightforward language, this mother tells the heart’s story: the love for her [adopted] son which had to continue without that son; the embrace of speechless grief and of a murmuring, speaking community; the deep, spiritual events that occurred for her and her family when one son took his life. It is the author’s intent that reading this will be an experience which enhances life; one which will help make the encounter with grief not only more bearable, but actually growth-producing. Readers will find here therapy, catharsis, understanding, and even fresh grounding for faith, hope, and love—hope, being at such times and momentarily, “the greatest of these.” About the Author: Corinne Chilstrom is the associate pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Park Ridge, IL. A registered nurse, she has been active in hospice work, and over the past several years, she has spoken frequently and conducted many grief-related workshops.

This is a short biography of Angelina Jolie.

Regie Hamm’s life has all the twists, turns, and drama of a Hollywood movie. Only this isn’t Hollywood, and the cast isn’t actors. As a hit artist, producer, and songwriter, Regie was familiar with the drama of the press, the endless nights in the studio, and the uncertainty of his next paycheck. But nothing would prepare him for the drama of a rural Chinese hospital, the endless nights of raising an insomniac baby, or the uncertainty of her condition. There was nothing he could do except stand by and helplessly watch his life and career spin out of control. Regie’s story is one of a man and his family who overcame enormous obstacles. It is a journey that put him in the company of Angels and Idols—a journey that would test not only his physical resources but also his faith. Join author Regie Hamm as he recounts his rise, his fall, and his ultimate surrender to God’s will.

From Back Cover: Denise’s forst words, “Me no want,” were spoken the day a social worker came to take her from the only family she ever knew. Thomas died, buried in an unmarked grave to keep a family secret. Gayle was given up by her parents because she was born imperfect. Michael found a home thanks to a chance social encounter. Kendra was born to a heroin-addicted mother and adopted by her foster family after four years of parental indecision and bureaucratic inertia.

Angels Passing Through is the story of these children, a childhood dominated by the ebb and flow of over forty foster babies and the lifelong ripples of this experience, and is a must-read for anyone who has ever been involved in foster care, or simply has been touched by a baby’s innocence.

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About the Author: Peter Mastrantuono is now a freelance write after a 30-year career on Wall Street, and the proud father of two grown sons. Angels Passing Through is his first book.

From the Dust Jacket: Born with a number of birth defects known as VATER Syndrome, Anna Loizeaux’s chances for survival were uncertain. Each day was a gift and each moment was precious. Much of her brief life was spent in hospital nurseries and operating rooms, where medical technology and human intervention mustered all their resources to give her the chance for life that nature had not. In the end, they couldn’t.

Anna was also born with a tremendous will to live—a “wild heart,” her father calls it—and her months of life contained a lifetime. The bonds that grew between parents and child were sturdy and timeless. Most memorable of all were those days when Anna and her family could experience the luxury of the ordinary, a life at home. Their time together was lived with an intensity that matched Anna’s own extraordinary tenacity.

Several weeks after Anna’s death, William Loizeaux began a journal, a chronicle of dates and anniversaries, of memories and remembrances. Anna: A Daughter’s Life is at once an effort to recreate her life and to measure his grief, to find reasons to go on while knowing the past would not let go its hold. Who can make sense of the death of a child? Where is the design to the enormity of that loss? Anna’s death tore a hole in the fabric of her parents’ lives, forcing them to confront what had seemed unimaginable.

In language everyone who has experienced loss will recognize and understand, Loizeaux gives much more than the mere consolation that time will pass and dim the pain. Anna truly transformed her parents’ lives She made them more attentive to miracles and rituals, great and small, and opened their eyes to the gifts and the cares of others who shared in Anna’s life and death—from casual acquaintances to close friends and family. This stunningly beautiful record of a father’s grief, begun out of isolation and helpless rage, becomes an act of celebration. In it, he finds, and offers to us, the courage and spirit that asked so much from so brief a life. Anna: A Daughter’s Life is an unforgettable portrait of an unforgettable daughter.

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About the Author: Anna Loizeaux was born on January 21, 1989, and died on July 4th of that year. William Loizeaux is a writer and teacher of creative writing at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He lives with his wife Beth and their daughter Emma in Hyattsville, Maryland.