This book pretends to present various views of adoption (adoptee, birth mother, etc.) What is actually presents is an extremely distorted, melodramatic set of short stories. The stories are neither thoughtful nor perceptive. The depiction of adoption as some sort of "problem" is unsophisticated and cliche. Really dreadful reading.

I bought this book because I was told that many of the stories focus on adopted daughters/mothers, and indeed most, if not all, do. However, as an adoptive mother, I found the stories to be very depressing - many of them deal with adoptive women pining away after "real" mothers (yes, Gasco uses the word "real" to mean birth mother). In all, the stories do NOT explore the relationship between adoptive daughters and their adoptive mothers in any positive manner.

A quirky, sometimes upsetting but always sympathetic examination of the dark side of parent-child relationships. From a woman struggling with her ambivalent emotions about pregnancy ("....once you give the gift [of life] there is no returning it. It is in fact a final sale.") to an adopted child kidnapped by her weird but loving biological father and returned by police to her adoptive parents years later ("the neediness of adults makes you dizzy"), these stories get inside some scary emotions without ever losing a sense of humor. As the mother of two grown children, one given up for adoption and refound as an adult, the other raised from infancy, I welcomed the rare chance to read intelligent stories that resonated with some of my own experiences and emotions.