From the Dust Jacket: Spanning some eight decades, here is the remarkable and remarkably candid autobiography of an extraordinary woman, born with—and very much a part of—the twentieth century.

Laura Z. (for Zametkin) Hobson ... from her childhood as the daughter of the first editor of the Jewish Daily Forward to a stint of reporting on the New York Post; from marriage to and divorce from book publisher Thayer Hobson to director of promotion of Time and a position as perhaps the leading magazine promotion writer in the country; from the extraordinary adoption of one son and the birth of another—both as a single parent—to sudden international fame following publication of the classic novel about antisemitism—Gentleman’s Agreement; and along the way very personal memories of such as Henry R. Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Thompson, PM newspaper founder Ralph Ingersoll, Simon & Schuster co-founder Richard Simon and many more ... here indeed is a life.

Laura Z evokes the cultural and political drama of an America in turmoil and transition—and reveals a woman whose life placed her sometimes at odds with, and surely generations ahead of, her time.

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About the Author: Laura Z. Hobson’s novels include The Trespassers, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Other Father, The Celebrity, First Papers, The Tenth Month, Consenting Adult, Over and Above and Untold Millions. She has also written two books for children. She makes her home in New York City.

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By the Same Author: Laura Z: A Life: Years of Fulfillment (1986, Donald I. Fine), among others.

Marie was a severely handicapped five-year-old and Michelle was an ordinary teenager when they first met. Michelle Daly soon became the youngest single woman in Britain to obtain legal guardianship of somebody else’s child. Now, over forty years later, Michelle tells their story—a challenge to all who read it and a celebration of great achievement—in an unsentimental, honest and thought-provoking voice.

From the Dust Jacket: In her extraordinary career as a prison reformer, Miriam Van Waters worked tirelessly to champion the cause of socially disadvantaged and delinquent women. Yet, it was her sensational battle to retain the superintendency of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women in 1949 that made her a national cause célebre, triumphantly defending herself against an array of political and ideological enemies.

In this compelling biography, Estelle Freedman moves beyond the controversy to reveal a remarkable woman whose success rested upon the power of her own charismatic leadership. She touched thousands of people—from Boston Brahmins to alcoholics, prostitutes, and desperate criminals, to her devoted prison staff and volunteers. Through her, we meet a wealth of characters, including Eleanor Roosevelt, and see the realities of life in the early decades of this century for a single mother of an adopted daughter.

Drawing from Van Waters’ diaries, letters, and personal papers, Freedman recreates a complex personal life, unveiling the disparity between the confident public persona and the agonized private soul. Van Waters struggled through family tragedy, depression, and ill health but found solace in her work, her friends and supporters, and in the deeply romantic relationship she shared with her benefactor, Geraldine Thompson.

A compelling tale in its own right, Van Waters’ life also supplies a missing chapter in the history of American women. Combining a deep faith in the social power of motherhood with professional efforts to secure equal justice for women and children, Van Waters and her generation provide a legacy for contemporary women activists.

With the power and elegance of a novel, Maternal Justice illuminates this historical context, casting light on the social welfare tradition, on women’s history, on the American feminist movement, and on the history of sexuality.

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About the Author: Estelle B. Freedman, is professor of history at Stanford University, author of Their Sisters Keepers and co-author with Join D’Emilio of Intimate Matters.

From the Back Cover: A Miracle Every Day takes an illuminating and intimate look at flourishing single-mother families. Single motherhood and the children of single mothers have been the subject of overwhelmingly negative statistical analysis. But, asks Marita Golden, where are the studies that analyze the strengths of single mothers, the positive adaptive skills learned by their children, the support systems that help these families work? In A Miracle Every Day Golden, once a single mother herself, and several other single mothers and their family members share their success stories with great honesty and insight. Golden identifies the coping characteristics these families have in common and organizes them into guiding themes, making A Miracle Every Day a book that single mothers and their support networks can turn to for wisdom, comfort, and inspiration.

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About the Author: Marita Golden is the author of four novels, most recently The Edge of Heaven (Doubleday, 1997). She has also written Saving Our Sons: Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World; edited Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers on Men, Love and Sex; and co-edited Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race—all of which have been published by Doubleday. Executive Director of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, Marita Golden is also on the faculty of the M.F.A. Graduate Creative Writing Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. She lives in Mitchellville, Maryland, with her husband and son.

From the Back Cover: As the third of nine children in a tight-knit Catholic family, author E.M. Stoddard learned how to be resilient early in life. Although her childhood had many happy memories, Stoddard was determined not to relive her mother’s life, a life burdened with too much responsibility and dependence on an emotionally distant husband.

Soon after earning her RN as a nurse, Stoddard married her boyfriend Patrick, whose alcohol problems caused trouble for the couple almost immediately. As the years progressed, Patrick’s behavior continued to deteriorate, and divorce became the only logical choice.

After the dissolution of her marriage, Stoddard’s life changed dramatically. With the responsibilities of a new job, a mortgage—and most importantly—her [adopted] nine-year-old son, Matt, Stoddard couldn’t rely on her ex-husband to provide support. She had to do it on her own.

Since her new position required extensive travel, Stoddard decided live-in help was a necessity. But finding a trustworthy, dependable nanny became an educational experience as she hired a total of seven individuals over the next few years, most with qualities that made them less-than-ideal child care providers.

Mom’s the Word tells the inspiring and often humorous story of Stoddard’s experiences as she, her son, and their fat beagle survive the craziness, heartache, fear, joy, and personal growth that come with life’s challenges.

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About the Author: E.M. Stoddard, was a successful businesswoman who traveled extensively. Retired, she now lives with her second husband in Connecticut and Florida.

Ours is an extraordinary time for anyone straight, gay, single, or coupled who’s ever wanted a baby of his or her own. Many aspiring parents now depend on some form of assisted reproductive technology (ART) to fulfill their dreams of starting a family. But as Dr. Diane Ehrensaft points out, parents who conceive with the help of a donor or surrogate often struggle with unforeseen questions. How can you help the child understand where he or she fits into the family and into the world? Exactly who is the mommy, and who is the daddy? How will grandparents and other family members react? What will the donor or surrogate have to say about it? In Mommies, Daddies, Donors, Surrogates, Dr. Ehrensaft addresses these topics and guides readers through a host of other concerns that may arise before, during, and after assisted conception. Provocative, compassionate, and immediately practical, Dr. Ehrensaft’s far-ranging inquiry raises issues no one affected by ART should ignore.

From the Dust Jacket: In 1997, Becky Thompson began parenting nine-year-old Adrian at the request of his mother, changing both of their lives forever. Mothering without a Compass is the moving story of Thompson’s first year as the white lesbian “sudden-mother” of an African American boy: From the everyday yet sometimes overwhelming tasks of finding Adrian a school and debating the significance of action figures, to unexpected discussions about who pays whom at the sperm bank and the more complicated matters of racism, sexuality, nontraditional families, open adoption, love, and loss, Thompson gives us an absorbing and often humorous account of her experience with antiracist, multicultural parenting.

Mothering without a Compass relates a lesbian parent’s struggle to help her child grow up and describes the complexities facing children who have more than one family. This candid, personal story shows that it is through everyday life that questions about race, class, gender, and sexuality are often played out. This is a necessary book for all parents—and for anyone concerned with the challenge of raising justice-minded children in a complicated world.

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About the Author: Becky Thompson is associate professor of sociology at Simmons College in Boston. She is the author of A Hunger So Wide and So Deep: A Multiracial View of Women’s Eating Problems (Minnesota, 1994) and the coeditor (with Sangeeta Tyagi) of Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity and Beyond a Dream Deferred: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Excellence (Minnesota, 1993). Her book A Promise and a Way of Life: White Antiracist Activism is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.

My Journey to the Son: The Surrogacy Road was based on the true story of Roberto A. De Souza, a single man going against all odds for a chance to have his biological child using a gestational surrogate in India and an egg donor from the United States. During his journey, he learned that the road of surrogacy wasn’t an easy path to walk on, as he was led to believe in the beginning, but in despite of all obstacles, he kept going on in his journey, to find out that in the end of the road there is a fork, if you go right you get to have pure joy in your life, your dreams become true, you have a baby, but if you go left, you are doomed, there is no baby, sometimes there is no more money or psychological power to go back to the road and start it over and the bad news about this fork in the road, that no surrogacy company tells you is: You do not get to choose if you take right or left. The left part of the road is pure stress, cruel and emotionally destructive.

Author Garry White’s instinctual desire to love and provide a home for disadvantaged youth has been denied again and again on the basis of what appears to be personal bias and an isolated episode of mental illness several years in the past. In My Quest to Be a Single Dad, Garry fights the social implication and double standard that single men are unfit to be parents. Anyone involved in social family services or potential adopters will be intrigued by this determined author’s tale of continued rejection and social stigmas. Single adults hoping to adopt will also find valuable tips on the dos and don’ts of adoption, many of which Garry had to learn the hard way.

This is a heartwarming adoption story of a middle-aged Anglophile, a New York City teacher of the blind who travels literally around the world to adopt a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in the far reaches of Siberia. Mother and son’s trials and tribulations parallel events in the lives of the Royal Family and its circle as the little, newly formed family forges a deep, abiding bond.

From the Publisher: An intensive look at the key financial issues that affect the three-quarters of American families that are “nontraditional.” The majority of today’s households are headed up by single parents, step-parents, grandparents, same-sex parents, adoptive parents, divorced parents. This book—with its unique user-friendly design—addresses the major financial and legal concerns that nontraditional families have in common and provides explicit strategies for coping with these issues.

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About the Author: Emily Card, editor in chief and publisher of Emily Card’s MoneyLetter for Women, is an attorney and nationally recognized financial expert. Her breakthrough work as a Senate Fellow in 1974 resulted in the passage of the Equal Opportunity Act, opening the door for women’s access to consumer credit, and set the tone for a lifetime devoted to educating consumers about money. She resides in Santa Monica, California, with her 13-year-old son.

Christie Watts Kelly is a writer specializing in personal finance and family issues. She resides in Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband and two children.

Growing up in a world dominated by fear and loneliness, Fiona knew that something was wrong, but assumed it was all her fault. A breakdown at the age of eighteen brought her to the brink of despair, but proved to be the turning point. A combination of cognitive behaviour therapy, friendships at university and gaining a personal faith gave her new hope. Subsequent failure to meet the right man led to plunging self-esteem and a return to loneliness, but she eventually found fulfilment through adopting two baby boys with Down’s Syndrome. When her sons were teenagers, she was finally diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 48, enabling her to make sense of her life and gain the self acceptance that had eluded her for so long. This is a true story. Only the names have been changed.

Single-parent families have consistently come under attack on the basis that this family structure is not best for children. But is this always the case? And is this the reality of most people’s experiences? And what of “artificially” created families? This study is unique and ground-breaking in that it is the first time that a research study has set out to document and comment on the experiences of single adopters and their children. Undertaken with funding from the Department of Health, it presents findings and conclusions including critical policy considerations which are intended to contribute to an ongoing debate. It will contribute substantially to the thinking of policy makers, practitioners, parents and other individuals who must decide, on the basis of evidence presented, how far this unique form of family building may contribute to the care and well-being of vulnerable children in post-millennium Britain.

From the Publisher: Adopting a child over the age of two can present unique challenges and opportunities, even for experienced parents. It is one thing to understand about adopting an older child and quite another to live with that child. This book presents both the author’s personal experiences after having adopted three children (ages nine to twelve) and the results of her research of over thirty families who adopted older children.

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About the Author: Grace Robinson of Fort Collins, Colorado, was a Middle School teacher for 20 years. In 1983 when she wanted a Middle School-aged child she would not have to give up in June, she adopted a twelve-year-old. In the next three years, she adopted a thirteen-year-old and a nine-year-old. Grace has been an active member of Family Resources, a private, non-profit agency specializing in older child adoption.

From the Dust Jacket: Unmarried motherhood: we debate it, discourage it, even legislate against it, yet it has continued to increase, in a steady rise that epitomizes the enormous changes of the last half-century. In 1950, only four percent of American babies were born to mothers who were not married, and many of these children were subsequently adopted. Almost fifty years later that figure is up to nearly a third of all births—more than one million babies each year—and their mothers, whether they are teenagers or professionals in their forties, now usually raise these children on their own.

This rapid and staggering change in family formation is the target of much vigorously argued commentary, but too little commonsense analysis. Melissa Ludtke, a career journalist who has specialized in writing about children and the family, has finally produced the first in-depth, objective examination of this emotionally charged issue. The result of years of research as well as interviewing and questioning experts representing all sides of the issue, the book is nevertheless a deeply personal one, interweaving Ludtke’s findings with her own decade-long debate over whether to raise a child on her own. Her accessible approach takes us behind the statistics, framing mothers’ vividly told remembrances with current scholarly insights, but never losing sight of the private, everyday details of women’s lives.

Recognizing that unmarried mothers come from widely differing age groups and backgrounds, Ludtke focuses on the two extremes: teenagers and women over the age of thirty-five. While examining their contrasting circumstances, she locates surprising areas of common ground among these women who, regardless of age or income, have chosen to bypass marriage and raise children on their own, in spite of the struggle and the loneliness, in spite of society’s harsh judgment. This ambitious, insightful, and moving investigation has already been endorsed by political leaders, sociologists, doctors, and journalists as the essential book on unmarried motherhood in our time.

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About the Author: Melissa Ludtke drew national attention in 1978, when, as a reporter for Sports Illustrated, she took Major League Baseball to court to gain women reporters equal access to athletes’ locker rooms. She then became a correspondent for Time, where her articles, including more than twenty cover stories, focused on family and children. While researching and writing this book, she had fellowships at Harvard, Radcliffe, and the Columbia School of Journalism. Ludtke is a graduate of Wellesley College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From the Publisher: Mired in debt and on the run from a series of broken homes, about-to-be-divorced Debra Monroe pulls up in front of a tumbledown cabin outside a small Texas town. Its isolation—miles from her teaching job in a neighboring city—feels right. She buys the house and ultimately doubles its size as she waits for the call from the adoption agency to tell her she’s going to be a mom. Now in her forties, she is swept into the strange new world of single motherhood, complicated by the fact that she’s white and her daughter is black. As Monroe learns to deal with her daughter’s hair and to re-enter the dating scene, all the while coping with her own and her daughter’s major illnesses, they live under the magnified scrutiny of the small, conservative town. Confronting her past in order to make a better life for her daughter, Monroe rebuilds not only a half-ruined cabin in the woods but her sense of what it is that makes a sustainable family.

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About the Author: Debra Monroe lived in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Utah, and North Carolina before moving to Texas in 1992. She is the author of four previous books, including two collections of stories, The Source of Trouble and A Wild, Cold State, and two novels, Newfangled and Shambles. Her books have been widely reviewed and have won many awards, including the Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, the John Gardner Fellowship, and The Violet Crown Award. Her books have appeared on “Best Ten” lists in Elle and Vanity Fair magazines and in Borders’ “Original Voices” series. She has published fiction and nonfiction in many journals and magazines. She teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University and lives in Austin, Texas.

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By the Same Author: Shambles (2004), among others.

From the Back Cover: This true, heartwarming story reveals that miracles occur in everyday life. Enjoyable and uplifting, One Kid at a Time will empower—and encourage—everyone who reads it.

Danny had no chance. His mother abandoned him. His father in prison didn’t know him. His grandmother beat him so badly that the doctors couldn’t count the bruises. He lived nonstop days of unending anxiety, loneliness and terror. Ordered into foster care, the system isolated, drugged and betrayed him.

Jake lived the good life. Warm friendships, plenty of money and freedom to do what he enjoyed. From the outside he had the perfect existence. But inside he longed for a child.

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About the Author: Jake Dekker spent more than two years representing children as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). He regularly advocates for child welfare and foster care reform. He is working on his next book about children in the child welfare system.

PaniK is a compilation of true stories submitted by men and women from all over the United States. They have experienced some of life’s greatest challenges—single parenting, abortion, adoption, miscarriage, and stillbirth. This collection of 60 stories will give the reader a new perspective, heal a wound, or just embrace another, through words. This book is neither pro-life nor pro-choice. It is real life and what we make of it. These amazing stories will help give support to those who are or who will be going through similar circumstances. This project also gives the writer an outlet to finally have a voice. This is an ongoing project. You can submit your story to be a part of this ever growing project. Testimonial for this project. “I feel that Help Inspire Others is a powerful force through which people, who have seen and felt the same experiences, can come together and offer support when the journey becomes turbulent.” For more information visit www.Helpinspireothers.com.

Hillary Clinton wrote that it takes a village to raise a child. For John Kruse and Gary Beuschel, it took a village just to have one. On a late August day in 2003, John and Gary flew with grim urgency from San Francisco, where they live, to Anchorage, where their daughters were soon to be born more than three months premature at Providence Alaska Medical Center. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Cathy, their surrogate, was supposed to give birth to healthy baby girls in San Francisco in December, when they were due. Instead, Veronica and Zola were born at 26 weeks, weighing less than two lbs each, with a tenuous grasp on life. Zola and Veronica were so premature, their brains were still developing the circuitry required for managing the basic functions of life. Their lungs were so immature, they couldn’t breathe without help. They couldn’t see or hear. They couldn’t eat or drink. They couldn’t survive at room temperature. Zola and Veronica were on a journey of survival, and required highly specialized around-the-clock care in order to make it. John and Gary worried that a hospital in Alaska wouldn’t be able to give Veronica and Zola the care they needed. They worried that a gay San Francisco couple would be treated with hostility at a Catholic hospital. They needn’t have worried. They were treated with friendliness and respect. As they talked with the doctors and nurses, and witnessed the care their daughters were receiving, they realized they had the good fortune of being in a world-class NICU. Slowly but surely, over the course of three months, Zola and Veronica went from being very sick stick-figure preemies to healthy babies ready to go home. John and Gary went from being baby-care neophytes to diaper-changing, bottle-feeding, baby-wrangling super-dads. On this journey, John and Gary relied heavily on the support of their family and friends, and yes, even the kindness of strangers. Papa and Daddy and Babies in Alaska is the story of John and Gary’s quest for children, and an appreciation of all the help they had along the way. It’s an intimate look at the surrogacy process. It’s an exploration of the medical advances that made it possible for Veronica and Zola to survive and thrive. It’s a heartfelt thank-you to the NICU staff. It’s a sampling of the pleasures of life in Anchorage. It’s a love letter to Zola and Veronica to let them know how much they were wanted.

From the Dust Jacket: Over the years, Michael Dorris—award-winning anthropologist, nonfiction writer, and bestselling novelist—has written essays on a remarkably wide range of topics reflective of the many hats he has worn: father, son, and husband; scholar, professor, and student; writer; critic; activist; traveler; and observer. His pieces have appeared everywhere from the New York Times to Ladies’ Home Journal to Booklist and, collected here, show that whatever his subject, Michael Dorris is consistently thought-provoking.

In Paper Trail, Dorris reminisces about the mother and grandmother who raised him, recalling the time he and his mother went backstage in Louisville to meet Tyrone Power. He wrestles with the painful recognition of his adopted son’s affliction with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, exposing his feelings and failings in a way that clearly shows the complexities of dealing with that dilemma. He, gives keen insights into contemporary Native American issues and explores the backroads of America, all the while entertaining, inspiring, and engaging us with his humor, anger, and awe.

A remarkably diverse collection, Paper Trail offers the unique perspectives of Michael Dorris.

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About the Author: Michael Dorris is the author of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, The Broken Cord, Working Men, and Morning Girl and coauthor with Louise Erdrich of The Crown of Columbus.

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By the Same Author: The Broken Cord (1989, Harper & Row).

The biography of Wendy Wolf who entered an iron lung at the age of four and emerged a polio survivor and quadriplegic whose life illustrates the challenges of opportunity and acceptance people with disabilities face and the triumphs and successes this extraordinary woman achieved. After seven unsuccessful surgeries, she went on to earn three degrees, help hundreds of children through her work as a Speech Therapist in New York and Mexico and Arizona, establish the first Independent Living Center in Arizona, create a unique introductory service for people with disabilities, raise two foreign-born special-needs children largely as a single parent, advocate for many issues to improve the lives of people with disabilities, and become Ms. Wheelchair Arizona 2006 and, at the Ms. Wheelchair America 2007 Pageant, win the Nicki Arde award for her lifelong history of advocacy. Thomas’s stories champion the underdog, such as his memoir Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet, in which he details his ten year collaboration with that controversial comics martyrdom for First Amendment rights. Thomas was Lenny Bruce’s only collaborator, co-authoring the comedy material on Bruce’s first three comedy albums and three screenplays, plus photographing his album covers, filming the pilot for the first feature, and booking him into critical career changing venues. Critics have described Thomas’s memoir of his collaboration in terms such as, “He superbly evokes the atmosphere of the cheap Hollywood nightclubs and coffeehouses,” and “His work sometimes reads like a Bogart script.” Thomas’s multi-faceted career as a screenwriter, book author, photographer, cinematographer, filmmaker, and public relations executive spanned the latter half of the twentieth century, working for and with A-List celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Shecky Greene, and others. Some of his later fiction parallels those careers such as his novel Cleo and an anthology of twelve short stories titled Hollywood Tales From The Outer Fringe. He grew up in the New Orleans and Gulf Coast areas, eventually marrying and divorcing his highschool teacher, as told in his childhood memoir The Genteel Poor. He worked as a cocktail pianist in New Orleans’ French Quarter, which provided the background for his novel French Quarter Odyssey. He served a year of combat in Korea during the early 1950s which served as the background for his novel The Josan And The Jee. Most of Thomas’s work is available on Amazon.com in both print and e-book editions. Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet is also available in a Japanese edition from DHC of Tokyo. Thomas will soon be releasing a science fiction trilogy and an anthology of short stories laid in New Orleans. He resides in Tucson, AZ, where he occasionally teaches writing and film production in between working on a variety of literary and film projects. More information about the author and his work can be found at www.mediamaestro.net.

This adoption journal chronicles an 18-month transformation from successful businesswoman to a single mother of two children. The author, Margaret Schwartz, details her personal struggles and reveals how she navigates the bureaucracy of Ukraine, a country rife with poverty and corruption, to find the children who filled the emptiness in her heart. 10% of net profits are donated to hiskids2.org and life2orphans.org. About the Author: Margaret Schwartz was born and raised in Buffalo, NY. She moved to the Washington, DC, area after completing college and has spent the past 25 years building a thriving sales and marketing career. Today, Margaret is a successful marketing consultant and single mother of two adopted children. Through her book, The Pumpkin Patch: A Single Woman’s International Adoption Journey, she talks about how her life was transformed after traveling to Ukraine to adopt two young children. She has enhanced her life through a renewed spiritual faith with the belief that one can accomplish anything in life. She has become an adoption advocate and is working with several charities to improve the well-being of orphaned and abandoned children in Ukraine. Margaret is an exceptional public speaker who regularly addresses groups of all sizes.

His name is Ri, and his leg had been blown off in an attack on his village in which his entire family was killed. This is the true story of a young G.I. medic’s attempts to adopt the eight-year-old Cambodian boy. About the Author: George Norman Allen was born May 25, 1925, in Dublin and raised in the Bronx, NY, where his father was a city bus driver. During World War II, he served in the British merchant marine. Afterward, he enrolled at Columbia University, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in government in 1953 and a Master’s degree from its journalism school in 1954. After leaving the World-Telegram, Mr. Allen spent six years with NBC News covering civil rights demonstrations as well as the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In the late 1960s, he was an ABC News correspondent in Saigon covering the Vietnam War. Mr. Allen, who adopted two Vietnamese boys, also wrote Ri: The Timeless Story of a Child Who Redeems a Man at War (1978), a nonfiction account of an Army medic’s struggle to adopt a young Cambodian orphan whose left leg was amputated. After returning from Vietnam, Mr. Allen hosted a weekly public-affairs show for WTOP (Channel 9). He also made documentaries about the District’s public schools and the city’s drug problems, among other topics as varied as Washington-born pop composer Van McCoy and mass protests on Capitol Hill. In 1986, he began a decade-long career coaching executives, authors and other public figures on their communication skills. Allen died November 13, 2007, at Sibley Memorial Hospital after suffering strokes.

From the Dust Jacket: Making a home never goes altogether smoothly, especially when it happens almost by accident.

When author Eliza Thomas realizes suddenly, in her forties, that she has forgotten to make a life or a home, she thinks it’s time to find an alternative to her leaky, drafty apartment in Boston. After a few trips to the country, she finds an old Boy Scout cabin in a small valley in Vermont.

At first Thomas’s one-room cabin doesn’t seem like a place where she could live year-round—even with the cabinets and bunk beds that the previous owners added. It’s just somewhere to go on the weekends for some peace and quiet. But with Yankee ingenuity and a good sense of humor, Thomas sets about turning this tiny, eccentric structure into something closer to home.

She clears the land, builds two additions—the first to accommodate her grand piano and bed, the second to make room for her newly adopted Chinese daughter, Amelia—and she plants a garden. In the midst of all the construction, the mice, and the unexpected disasters, Thomas explores neighboring woods and farmland, rescues a puppy named Freddy, and with much imagination and a few stops at local yard sales, makes her quirky place livable.

The Road Home is an endearing account of the somewhat haphazard, always ongoing process of making a home.

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About the Author: Eliza Thomas moved to Vermont after living in the Boston area for many years. She shares her cabin with her young daughter and elderly dog and works a variety of part-time jobs. This is her first book.

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By the Same Author: The Red Blanket (2004, Scholastic).

When Dr. Gary Matloff reached out halfway around the world in Brazil to adopt a pair of brothers as a single father, already a seasoned child psychologist, he thought he was prepared in ways most adoptive parents might not be. But the journey that ensued for the three of them was fraught with life lessons of love, patience, and humility none of them had bargained for. After many years dreaming, then more years persevering through one door slam after another in seeking to adopt, this single dad-to-be found waiting for him brothers, Matheus and Davi on the other side of the equator. Well-practiced in working with maladjusted children, Dr. Matloff thought he was supposedly knowledgeable, and equipped to manage children with emotional disturbances and their temperamental behaviors. Yet he discovered all too soon that textbook prescriptions and a personal storehouse of professional skills in working with other troubled children and their parents in the past did not necessarily apply to his own sons. As their three strong-willed personalities navigated together the all-too-formidable twists and turns of forging a new family, transient language and cultural barriers quickly gave way to reinterpretations of relationships, love, and the rekindling of life’s potential. About the Author: Gary Matloff is a licensed psychologist with his Ph.D. in school psychology. He has specialized for the last twenty years in counseling children and adolescents, including many who had been adopted or were in foster care. He is well-versed in handling a variety of their behavioral and emotional challenges, and has been successful in helping their parents to work through many of these challenges. Dr. Matloff has had original studies and literature reviews published in academic journals, and has presented at local, state, and national conferences on a variety of psychological issues pertaining to children’s mental health and emotional adjustment. Yet he is anything but the perfect foil for the unpredictable attitudes and behavior of his two adopted sons; Dr. Matloff is just an ordinary person who is eager to share the joys of bringing up these boys, and the challenges of picking up from where their lives, as they had known it, had been taken from them. But his experiences as a professional in child behavior make this more than simply a memoir.

This book is in part a dramatic story about friendship, love and life challenges. It involves four women from diverse but similar backgrounds who find themselves living a life that involves facing homosexuality within a marriage, the consequences of living life on the wild side, single parenting and facing sickness and disease. The book also addresses spirituality and the true meaning of friendship and agape love. Journey the lives of these four women and experience a Shattered Image.

Sherry and Lee are the experts in the area of single parent adoption. They have studied the issue intensely, listened to both adoptees and parents, and most importantly they have lived it. This is an important book for all those impacted by single parent adoption. — Betsy Burch, Founder & Former Dir. of S.P.A.C.E. (Single Parent Adoption of Children Everywhere)

Whether you are a single parent who has adopted or is contemplating adopting, Single Adoptive Parents: Our Stories is a wonderful resource. Single parents, in their own words, discuss their decision to adopt, and share the joys and the challenges of parenting. — Jane Mattes, LCSW, Director, Single Mothers by Choice

Single Adoptive Parents: Our Stories is compelling and insightful. It fills a niche and a need for the people whom the title describes (as well as anyone connected to them), to be sure, but I also recommend this important book to anyone who cares about family issues—or simply wants to better understand the changing world around them. — Adam Pertman, Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Lee Varon and Sherry Fine have been helping the world of adoption for years with their books and videotapes about the joys and challenges of single parenthood in adoption. Most of the two-parent families that we see have enough challenges and require a repertoire of skills in order to parent children who have suffered loss, trauma and neglect, but for a single parent the need for multitasking and a strong support network is even more of a requirement. Sherry and Lee are part of that support network, and I rarely see a single parent adoptive family that I don’t recommend their books and tapes to This newest book is another major resource. — Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, CEO and Founder, Center For Family Connections

From the Publisher: A remarkable number of women today are taking the daunting step of having children outside of marriage. This book offers a full-scale account of this fast-growing phenomenon, revealing why these middle class women are taking this unorthodox path and how they have managed to make single parenthood work for them.

Sixty-five women were interviewed—ranging from physicians and financial analysts to social workers, teachers, and secretaries—who speak candidly about how they manage their lives and families as single mothers. What the research discovers are not ideologues but reluctant revolutionaries, women who—whether straight or gay—struggle to conform to the conventional definitions of mother, child, and family. Having tossed out the rulebook in order to become mothers, they nonetheless adhere to time-honored rules about child-rearing. As they tell their stories, they shed light on their paths to motherhood, describing how they summoned up the courage to pursue their dream, how they broke the news to parents, siblings, friends, and co-workers, how they went about buying sperm from fertility banks or adopting children of different races. They recount how their personal and social histories intersected to enable them to pursue their dream of motherhood, and how they navigate daily life.

What does it mean to be “single” in terms of romance and parenting? How do women juggle earning a living with parenting? What creative ways have women devised to shore up these families? How do they incorporate men into their child-centered families? This book provides concrete, informative answers to all these questions.

From the Back Cover: Single motherhood has increased by 60 percent over the past decade. Nearly a quarter of America’s never-married women are now mothers. Finally there is a guidebook available for this rapidly growing population of single women who have chosen motherhood, and for the even greater numbers who are actively considering it.

Psychotherapist Jane Mattes is the founder and director of Single Mothers by Choice, the only national organization of its kind, and the single mother of a teen-aged son. Drawing on the experiences of thousands of women in her organization, Mattes presents a personal and accessible analysis of the available options, from insemination to adoption, and examines the problems, rewards, and questions—including the important “daddy questions”—that a single mother can expect to face. Included are unique lists of support groups, adoption agencies, and sperm banks that work with single women. Single Mothers by Choice is a sensible, down-to-earth guide to help women decide if single motherhood is for them.

A realistic and compassionate view of the lives, motivations, and feelings of single parents, and a comprehensive appraisal of the social, legal, and financial ramifications of this new lifestyle in the areas of: Men as Mothers; Day Care Centers; Psychological, Educational, and Tax Problems; Homosexuals as Parents; Dating and Sexual Problems; Breaking the News to Your Family; Interracial Adoption; and List of Advisory Services by City and State. Who are today’s single parents and why have they chosen this difficult, tradition-breaking role? Through candid interviews with parents, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and lawyers, Carole Klein offers a startling and important picture of our cultural and moral attitudes, and intimate insights into the people who forego the security of marriage for the independence and challenge of single parenthood.