From Publishers Weekly
Hoffman's middling debut explores the darker side of open adoption, as seen through the eyes of Chloe Pinter, a young social worker at a Portland, Ore., adoption agency. Juggling the insecurities of the wealthy and infertile Francie and John McAdoo with the increasingly strident demands of the contracted and impoverished birth parents, Penny and Jason, Chloe starts to question her own beliefs and motivations. When Chloe sees that Penny has bought a basinet, she warns the McAdoos that the adoption might not go through, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that eventually puts a newborn in danger's path. Hoffman seems to want the reader to understand the dilemma of birth parents confronted with the need to give up a child, but Penny and Jason and their family are too damaged and destructive to elicit any empathy, and the McAdoos, on the other end of the class spectrum, never fail to fall into stereotype. There is a whisper of a solid story about the way poverty, yearning, opportunity, and loss can play out, but with characters so weakly realized, it's tough to see this as anything more than a good-intentioned but inexpert exercise.
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From
Chloe Pinter is in charge of domestic adoptions at Portlandβs Chosen Child adoption agency. She advertises on adoption Web sites; interviews prospective birth mothers; arranges for their rent, food, and clothing for the last three months of their pregnancies; keeps files on all potential adoptive families; attends the births; and basically is on call 24 hours a day. She feels she is making a positive difference in the lives she touches, which makes up for her low salary. But suddenly things begin to disintegrate. One set of birth parents, Penny and Jason, try to extort adoptive parents John and Francie for more money, and demand that Chloe find Jason a job. Then John runs off with βa 19-year-old whore in Singapore,β and Francie starts divorce proceedings. Chloe begins to think that following her undependable but loyal surfer boyfriend to Hawaii may not be such a bad idea. Hoffman herself has worked in an orphanage and run an adoption program, and her sparkling debut fully engages the reader with Chloeβs altruistic dreams and the predicament in which she unexpectedly finds herself. --Deborah Donovan