Part memoir, part manual, this is the story of a middle-age white couple who adopted a black toddler born addicted to a pharmacy of recreational drugs. ``I never wanted to be a father,'' writes journalist Schwarz (Walking with the Damned, 1992, etc.), blaming an unhappy childhood. But his second wife, Leslie, wanted to be a mother. First she suffered a miscarriage and then a brain tumor. Although she recovered completely, prospects for pregnancy were dim. Watching a television show that paraded the faces of ``unadoptable'' children (too old, the wrong color or ethnic group, too damaged at birth) like so many ``stray cats and dogs from the local humane society,'' they decided to be the ``somebody somewhere'' who would become mother and father to one of these children. They are offered Raheem, a three-year-old boy who had been shuffled from foster home to foster home; in the first 48 hours he spends with his parents-to-be, he throws two temper tantrums and generally leaves ``havoc in his wake.'' To Schwarz's wonderment, he loves the boy deeply and immediately. The adoption is finalized and soon Clifford, a troubled teenager and Raheem's former babysitter, comes to live with them as well. Schwarz's sweet story of how his love for Raheem has changed him is interspersed with the results of his extensive research, including information on the unexpected difficulties of adoption, from dire warnings of Adopted Child Syndrome (the superstitious prejudice that adopted children are ``demon seed,'' destined to rise violently against their adoptive parents) to how ill- prepared parents are to deal with the everyday behavior of children who have been sexually molested or otherwise abused. Useful information combined with an honest and warmhearted account of a couple becoming a family, best suited for others considering adoption of troubled children. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-88282-136-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: New Horizon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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