cover image The Limits of Hope

The Limits of Hope

Ann Kimble Loux. University of Virginia Press, $35 (280pp) ISBN 978-0-8139-1710-8

The popular view of adoption is that children are rescued from unhappy situations, given loving homes, and grow and prosper. While this undoubtedly happens, Loux's courageous story of an adoption tragedy appears to be all too common. With three biological children and a stable family situation, the author and her husband rather impulsively adopted two girls, aged four and three, whom they later learned came from a background of extreme abuse and neglect. The book follows the Louxes' increasing hopelessness and despair as the girls fail to develop normally. Problems with family, peers and the school system increase as the girls progress into and through adolescence. The author, a college English professor, writes well and with feeling. Her presentation can be jarring, however; although Loux had ""50 plus pages of single-spaced monologues that [she] took down immediately after those conversations took place,"" the presence of these verbatim conversations 20 years after the fact, and of the small details of life usually beyond memory's capture, still feels strained. Loux's basic argument--of the need for changes in adoption procedures, for agency education and for follow-ups to aid adopting families--is compelling. The girls, now in their 20s, continue to be troubled, lending a poignant credence to the book's title. (Sept.)