God and Jetfire: Confessions of a Birth Mother

Seek’s memoir is an unforgettable and exquisitely written narrative of motherhood in our time. Seek was an unmarried, Tennessee-born 22-year-old, studying architecture in Cincinnati, when she found herself pregnant and at a confusing crossroads. Though her lover (a Norwegian named Jevn) proposes to her, circumstances draw her down another path. After much research and rumination she finds a couple who agrees to an open adoption. After she gives birth, however, Seek savors the early days with her newborn, discovering that placing her child with the extraordinarily understanding adoptive parents is excruciatingly painful. With each visit she makes to the adoptive family, from her child’s infancy to age 12, she writes movingly of her close-up views of her son. Seek’s prose is lyrical, at times heart-wrenching, as she deeply explores her pain, regret, and longing. The author provides an informative view of open adoption (its advantages as well as its drawbacks). There is nothing prescriptive or commonplace about this true story of a mother who has to learn—as all parents must—both how to embrace, and how to let go. (July) [em] [/em]