Breeding in Captivity: One Woman’s Unusual Path to Motherhood

Bolt is an infertile couple’s best friend. When laughs are required, she refers to the doctor’s office as “The Spanketeria” and greets a negative pregnancy test by drinking straight from a bottle of champagne. Bolt is especially skilled at schadenfreude and not afraid to use it. After all, her difficult experience is destined to make others feel better. Beyond being infertile, Bolt’s endometriosis required surgery. When numerous rounds of uterine insemination (think: turkey baster) failed, she and her husband considered adoption and met three birthmothers who changed their minds. In writing about the deepest and darkest aspects of the quest to become a parent, Bolt’s prose can border on flippant—a girl’s guide gone pregnant—but she also writes with enviable acuity, as when she describes a visit to the home of friends, raising twin toddlers conceived in vitro: “There was a thin sheen of what appeared to be a fruit glaze on everything. The parents, once buttoned-up professionals, were shells of their formal selves…. Mark, whose patrician features had always seemed Gatsbyesque, now had the haunted, empty quality of a Dorothea Lange Dust Bowl portrait.” Infertility has a profound effect on hearts and pocketbooks, but with a martini glass in hand, Bolt promises comfort and humor to those hoping for as happy an ending as this book delivers. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency. (Sept.)