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O magazine

 
Adoptive Families

University of Chicago Magazine

A beautifully crafted, deeply insightful, painfully honest, and sometimes disturbing book.... I couldn't stop turning the pages.

A moving, wise, and powerful account of the agony, joy, and moral complexity at the heart of the parenting by choice that adoption is. An important read for those who want to understand the adoption experience.

Two Little Girls is a hard-headed, poignant, learned and touching account of several journeys the author has courageously taken. The first is the journey from infertility to adoption . . . . The second is the journey from the supposedly more secure American adoption system to the unknowns of an international adoption. The third is the literal journey, many times over, to unknown lands, to relationships fraught with bureaucratic idiocy, corruption, inevitable misunderstandings, endless frustration, occasional wonderful and wise encounters, and – always – waiting waiting waiting. This is evoked realistically, with some humor, even hilarity. The experience of these . . . journeys is described with care, wit, a larger perspective and, by the end, even . . . wisdom.

In Two Little Girls , Theresa Reid gives readers the turmoil, the heartache, the hard-earned joy that is all part of adoption. . . . With an intelligent narrative voice and an unflinching gaze, she explores the complex choices she and her husband encountered and the difficult decisions they ultimately made . . . . The author who emerges in these pages is tough, tenacious and . . . thoughtful; well-versed in the political, social, and emotional issues surrounding international adoption; and, above all, brutally frank about issues that adoptive parents debate privately, but often prefer to duck publicly.

Theresa Reid's candid memoir reveals the nitty gritty, daily consequences for prospective parents and orphanage children when American wealth and privilege, adoption agency turf protection, poverty, and nationalistic pride face off in Eastern Europe. The book reaches wide and deep into human behavior, global politics, and adoption mythology. If only pre-adoptive counseling would get this real!

Theresa, you've done a masterful job of taking the reader on your adoption journey. The polemic between head and heart – which is the defining dynamic of adoption – is beautifully rendered in Two Little Girls . I'd be delighted to endorse your manuscript with a blurb . . . . Your honesty and self doubt are universal, and will be familiar to readers who are not nearly as bright, as rational, or as privileged as you. The world needs your insights, Theresa. Congratulations on a fine job and thanks for the honor of sharing it with me.