SEEKING FORGIVENESS

Educator Rachel offers her memoir of her experiences as a White adoptive mother of a Black son.

The author, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, presents a searing, complex picture of adoption and the reality that love can only overcome so much. The book’s anguished beginning tells of when her teenage son, Miles—whom she’d adopted as a baby—was taken into police custody in St. Louis (where the family lived) for reasons that weren’t immediately clear and her wondering how they reached this crisis. Central to this book is her raw and honest recognition of what she sees as the limits of what she could do for her son—specifically regarding the challenges she faced in affirming his Black identity and providing him with a quality education. She also thoroughly presents her struggle with single parenthood and the racism of others, including disapproving assumptions that Miles couldn’t be her “real” child. Throughout, her great love for her son shines through, as does her occasional exasperation with her teenager. Overall, it’s an engagingly written and well-structured book, intercutting scenes of her waiting in the police station for information about her son with flashbacks to earlier parts of her life. As the book advances, she builds to a powerful scene that unravels the mystery of her son’s police detention, emphasizing how things are not always as they seem and how perceptions can be influenced by bigotry. Afterward, though, Rachel offers readers a somewhat too easy freeze-frame conclusion when a more detailed epilogue might have offered more helpful perspective.

An important story of one family’s adoption challenges and realities.