Morning-Glory Babies: Children with AIDS and the Celebration of Life

The Starcross Community is a monastic family of lay, nontraditional Catholics, located in Sonoma County in northern California. Media attention was focused on Starcross when it became known that the group adopted babies born with AIDS. McCarroll, one of the Starcross founders, tells the stories of three of these children, sharing the joys that energize the members of his extended family, despite the knowledge that the children they care for are doomed. The book covers one year, during which the children grew and thrived on the farm. Despite the depiction of bureaucratic wranglings over legal guardianship and one child's death 19 days after his first birthday, this is a joyously reflective narrative of ``what happened when one small spiritual family was enriched with the presence of children infected with the AIDS virus.'' It is a story of quiet heroics, one that focuses on life in the face of an epidemic that is calculated to affect 10,000 American babies in the next three years. (October)