Always in Our Hearts: The Story of Amy Grossberg, Brian Peterson, & the Baby Nobody Wanted

Most takes a sensational news story that he covered for the Record, a New Jersey newspaper, and draws from it one fairly tired lesson: parents, especially suburban parents who think that their kids are fine, have to make sure that the lines of communication are open between themselves and their children. In 1996, two 18-year-old college freshmen, Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, made headlines after they checked into a Delaware motel where Grossberg subsequently delivered a baby boy whom Peterson wrapped in a plastic bag and threw in a Dumpster. Most recounts these events and the trial that followed in clear journalistic style, but his account suffers because he was unable to interview Grossberg, Peterson or any family members. He provides an interesting description of the upper-middle-class New Jersey suburb where the two lived and offers a few well-worn theories as to why they didn't tell their families about the pregnancy or seek help: wealthy parents give their children luxuries but don't teach them values; Peterson's parents were divorced; Grossberg was afraid of displeasing her mother. But Most's reliance on a court transcript of an interview with Grossberg's mother leads him to speculate excessively about her possible bad parenting while neglecting the three other parents involved and giving short shrift to the moral culpability of Grossberg and Peterson themselves. Illustrations not seen by PW. 25,000 first printing; first serial to New Jersey Monthly and Delaware Today; author tour. (Feb.)