China Ghosts

The author of China Ghosts, Jeff Gammage, and his wife Christine, move from the United States to China in order to adopt a baby. After eighteen years of trying, they are successful and become a threesome. The author writes about their experiences as a couple, as well as their experiences as parents. He also writes about the process of adopting a baby in China and the challenges they faced. Overall, the author writes a thoughtful and revealing book about fatherhood, family, and adoption.

Moving from the U.S. to China and back, here is a poignant true story of fatherhood, family, and one determined couples triumphant struggle to adopt a baby in a foreign land. After eighteen years together, Christine and I are down to our last hour as a couple. By dinner we will be a threesome. It seems strange to stand so firmly atop a generational fault line, to know that in an hour you'll be a parent, to understand that your old life is disappearing before your eyes, that a new one is about to begin. . . . Aching to expand from a couple to a family, Jeff Gammage and his wife, Christine, embarked upon a journey that would carry them across a shifting landscape of emotion--excitement, exhilaration, fear, apprehension--and through miles of red tape and bureaucratic protocol, to a breathtaking land on the other side of the world where a little girl waited. When they met Jin Yu, a silent, stoic two-year-old, in the smog-choked city of Changsha in Hunan Province, they realized that every frustrating moment of their two-year struggle was worth it. But they also realized that another journey had only begun. Now there was much to experience and learn. How do you comfort a crying toddler when you and she speak different languages? How do you fully embrace a life altered beyond recognition by new concerns, responsibilities--and a love unlike any you've felt before? Alive with insight and feeling, China Ghosts is a journalist's eye-opening depiction of the foreign adoption process and a remarkable glimpse into a different culture. Most important, it is a poignant, heartfelt, and intensely intimate chronicle of the making of a family. Review: Revealing . . . thoughtful . . . A father-daughter love story from a sensitive writer who doesn't neglect thorny issues of race and culture. -- Kirkus Reviews