Adopting Hope: Stories and Real-Life Advice from Birthparents, Adoptive Parents, and Adoptees

Benson follows her 2016 memoir about placing her daughter for adoption, To Have and Not to Hold, with a collection of over three dozen personal narratives about adoption from birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees. The book is intended to encourage adoptive parents to allow relationships between adoptees and their biological parents. The stories from birth and adoptive parents typically take a gentle, retrospective tone, sharing a sense of profound gratitude even through difficulties, and often touching on Christian themes such as a view of adoption matches as God’s plan and delicately expressed anti-abortion sentiment. A few stories of international adoption show a more complicated side to the process, as in the case of adopting older children who may have been mistreated. The most varied experiences are recounted by the adoptees, all adults now, whose stories focus on the sometimes rewarding but sometimes devastating process of searching for their birth parents; their context—that of an earlier generation’s closed adoptions—may seem less relevant in today’s climate of open adoption and readily available information online. Despite the title, Benson mostly eschews practical advice, along with difficult questions, in favor of offering potential adopters emotional comfort through the reassuring words of others. (Sept.)