New Book on Guatemalan Adoption - Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl's Journey Through Adoption

A new book is coming out that tells the dramatic story of one child's adoption and subsequent trip to meet her birthfamily. You can click on more for more info that came to me by the author, Jacob Wheeler.

Jacob has been working on this book for quite some time and I was very impressed with his research. Many times he came to me to see if things made sense, what could be behind something he's found, and to do his best to walk the line between what he saw and experienced and perspectives that might explain them.

The end result is a great book valuable to us all. One caveat, please read the forward, written by yours truly, as it may help prepare you. And for the record, I was paid nothing, will be paid nothing no matter how many copies it sells, and only get a free copy for having written it.

From the author:

I'm elated to share the news with you that my book, Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl's Journey Through Adoption will be published on April 1 by the University of Nebraska Press. Writing this book has been a six-year undertaking, and during that time I've been blessed to meet you and learn your stories as they pertain to Guatemala and international adoption. Thank you for your words, your guidance, your constructive criticism, and your encouragement.

Please take a moment and check out my blog, http://betweenlightandshadow.com/ and also the University of Nebraska Press' website if you wish to order a copy: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Between-Light-and-Shadow,674763.aspx
Here are the Press’ words to describe the book:

“In Between Light and Shadow veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry, which has exploited, embraced, and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the Central American nation’s poorest children. Fourteen-year-old Ellie, abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan, is at the center of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Ellie’s abandonment, her adoption and Americanization, her search for her birth mother, and her joyous and haunting return to Guatemala, where she finds her teenage brothers—unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders.

Following Ellie’s journey, Wheeler peels back the layers of an adoption economy that some view as an unscrupulous baby-selling industry that manipulates impoverished indigenous Guatemalan women, and others herald as the only chance for poor children to have a better life. Through Ellie, Wheeler allows us to see what all this means in personal and practical terms—and to understand how well-intentioned and sometimes humanitarian first-world wealth can collide with the extreme poverty, despair, misogyny, racism, and violent history of Guatemala.”