An honest, heart-rending account of yet another aspect of human trafficking.
The author recounts navigating corruption in Uganda, where she attempted to adopt children.
In the early pages of Bonneur’s debut memoir, a heartbreaking statement is made by the author: “I lost six kids in the span of eighteen months. And they were never really mine.” By her own admission, Bonneur, a devout Christian married to a Marine veteran, was drawn to the idea of the adventure of an international adoption, and she gave little thought to the possibility of exploitation within the industry. She was introduced to James and Kira, supposedly put up for adoption because of a “tribal taboo.” It quickly became clear James didn’t understand what was happening, and his mother didn’t wish to part with her children, despite the work of the overzealous ministry. The second introduction was to Benjamin and Anna, two children who bullied each other constantly and regularly attempted to escape. They had been stolen by a pastor looking to sell children to support his church. She met Paul and Sasha, the latter prone to constant tantrums. She discovered much of Sasha’s distress was egged on by Paul, who, it turned out, was a young con coached by his mother. Crestfallen, the author returned home in 2015, eyes wide open about the system and with a deep desire to share her adventure-turned–cautionary tale with others hoping to adopt abroad. Bonneur gives a warts-and-all view, from detailing the extensive bureaucracy and money involved to her attempts to reunite the exploited children with their families to her profound personal challenges. Her memoir includes shared correspondence, personal journal entries, Scripture, and black-and-white photos. Crushing as all this is, the book also celebrates Uganda’s people, wildlife, and culture.
An honest, heart-rending account of yet another aspect of human trafficking.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1451-2
Page Count: 214
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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