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Parenting & Families |
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Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China
written by Beth Nonte Russell
Studio : Touchstone
by Touchstone
Publisher : Touchstone
Released : 2007-03-06
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780743292979
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 32 reviews)
List Price : $14.00
Our Price : $0.99
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Product Description |
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"Will you take her?" she asks. When Beth Nonte Russell travels to China to help her friend Alex adopt a baby girl from an orphanage there, she thinks it will be an adventure, a chance to see the world. But her friend, who had prepared for the adoption for many months, panics soon after being presented with the frail baby, and the situation develops into one of the greatest challenges of Russell's life. Russell, watching in disbelief as Alex distances herself from the child, cares for the baby -- clothing, bathing, and feeding her -- and makes her feel secure in the unfamiliar surroundings. Russell is overwhelmed and disoriented by the unfolding drama and all that she sees in China, and yet amid the emotional turmoil finds herself deeply bonding with the child. She begins to have dreams of an ancient past -- dreams of a young woman who is plucked from the countryside and chosen to be empress, and of the child who is ultimately taken from her. As it becomes clear that her friend -- whose indecisiveness about the adoption has become a torment -- won't be bringing the baby home, Russell is amazed to realize that she cannot leave the baby behind and that her dreams have been telling her something significant, giving her the courage to open her heart and bring the child home against all odds. Steeped in Chinese culture, Forever Lily is an extraordinary account of a life-changing, wholly unexpected love. |
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A story of deep love for a child, the reincarnation/supernatural aspects are a distraction rather than a supplement |
This book is a heartwarming message while generating a great sadness, as harsh reality is faced. Beth was asked by her friend Alex to travel with her to the People's Republic of China so that Alex could complete the adoption of an infant girl. Despite the impressive modernization that has taken place in China in the last few decades, remnants of the old culture are still present and strong. One of the strongest cultural mores still present is the belief in the necessity of having a male child. In old China, female children often were not named, could not own property and were in fact the property of their parents and husbands. Now that the Chinese government is enforcing a standard of one child per family, female children are often abandoned or even killed in rural areas of the country. The lucky ones are often put in state-run orphanages, where they are given little in the way of loving care and foreign families adopt the luckiest of this group.
When Beth and Alex arrive in China, suddenly Alex decides she does not want the baby. After visiting the orphanage and recognizing the conditions there, Beth's heart is torn and overcome by love for the infant, so she immediately agrees to take the baby herself. Fortunately, her husband is immediately agreeable. Guilt repeatedly washes over Alex and she engages in an internal debate of wanting and not wanting to take the baby that is eventually named Lily. Since Alex and her husband are the adoptive parents of record, Beth is an emotional limbo as she has grown very attached to Lily but has nothing in the way of rights to the child.
Legally, it is also a tangled mess, as Beth and her husband cannot simply adopt the child directly as it would appear to the INS that it was all an elaborate scam. Finally, after some tense moments a legal solution is found, Alex finally decides that she has no parental interest in Lily and a new family is created.
Unfortunately, the description of the plight of infant girls in China is as stated here. The disparity in the number of male children over female children is so wide that the population crisis may be solved in a "novel" way. Not because of the reduced number of females, but because so many men will never father a child for lack of suitable females for wives.
The author also engages in "flashbacks", dreams where she is an Empress in ancient China and is forced to give up an infant. Immediately before being selected by the Chinese Emperor, she had sex with her boyfriend and was impregnated. These flashbacks are used to explain the powerful feelings Beth has of Lily filling a void in her life. A few other appeals to the supernatural are also used in an attempt to explain the situation.
While my heart was warmed by Beth's successful adoption of the helpless Lily in a nearly hopeless situation, some of the supernatural aspects are a bit over the top. This is an example of one of the fallacies of reincarnation claims that are so often made. In ancient China, very few women filled the role of Empress and for every Empress; there were hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese women. Even if you believe in reincarnation, the odds that any one woman was ever an Empress (males could have been female in a previous life and vice versa) are hundreds of millions to one. I would have preferred it if the story had just been the feelings of love and caring for a helpless infant without having to rely on dreams of a past life to explain that love.
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An adoption story with a mystic touch |
First of all, if you're looking for a straight-forward adoption story, this is not it. There are almost two levels to this book - one that relates how Beth Nonte Russell travels to China to provide her friend Alex with some support as she goes through an adoption process. Only it turns out that Alex panics and ultimately decides not to go through with the adoption, leaving Beth in a difficult position. Beth finds she simply can't bring herself to leave the baby girl behind. This ties in with the second element in this novel - that of Beth's dreams - they are so vivid and seem to be her subconscious' attempt to guide her in making the right decision. Beth dreams of an ancient past in which she was an Emperor's concubine and of having a child only to lose it. The dreams play a significant role in helping Beth make decisions in her present life - i.e. to adopt the baby girl herself.
I admit the dream segments were quite jarring as readers are shuttled back and forth between the present, real-life events and Beth's dreams/ forays into an ancient past that closely mirrors her own emotional struggles in the present. But, if one is open-minded enough and especially those who believe one's dreams are significant [our subconscious' way of interacting with us], then this story will engage the reader. Otherwise, this may be more of a confusing/disturbing read [the struggles of the adoption process, the author's apparent lack of understanding of Chinese culture/customs may be another put-off].
All in all though, I found this an engaging story about adoption with an almost New Age element to it [how dreams impact our consciousness]. |
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Not What I Expected |
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I did not like the flops between reality and her dreams. The dreams could have been a second fiction book and keep to the facts in this autobiography. |
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Avoid this book! |
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I am spending a few months abroad in South Africa, and a friend who visited left this book with me. I am considering an international adoption, so I thought the book would be interesting. However, this ranks as one of the worst, most annoying books that I have ever picked up. The author tells the story of how when she accompanied a friend to pick up the Chinese baby that the friend was adopting, she ended up adopting the child herself. If she had told the story in a straightforward fashion, it might have been fine, though her writing is not particularly strong and her personality not particularly sympathetic, since she has little compassion for her friend and shows little understanding of Chinese culture and society. But instead, she intersperses the text with accounts of her dreams about being a concubine to an Emperor. A good third of the book is about her dreams, which she sees as significant but which are in fact an offensive Orientalist fantasy. I found her reactions to a descriptions of China and the Chinese people offensive. If that isn't enough, in the middle of the book she starts bringing in her mystic spiritual adviser, whom she contacts several times from China. I have no objection to faith and the mystical - in fact, I love magical realism - but the author's mystical inclinations are so poorly developed and so lacking in reflection that they really become annoying. The book becomes increasingly focused on fate and how she has been destined to adopt this baby since her teen years when she started speaking Chinese in her sleep! Rubish!! How do things like this get published? |
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WOW! |
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What an interesting story! This book tugged at my heart strings for this "unexpected mother." This true story had many twists and turns. This is a great read, very hard to put this book down! |
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