I’m also happy to report that I made a few new FB friends from this series (John and his wife, Amy) so there’s been an added bonus for me in making new friends.
Could you tell me a bit about your books The Marvelous Journey Home and To Sing Frogs? Is the The Marvelous Journey Home about your adoption experiences in Russia?
Spoiler Alert! The Marvelous Journey Home is thinly veiled fiction. It is based on the experiences we had while adopting our youngest two daughters. It’s a soft adoption story that metaphorically ties adoption and “going home to a better place” with death. People who are more sentimental and who enjoy a good and happy story loved The Marvelous Journey Home. It was written for adopting families and people interested in the happy side of the story. More than anything, it’s the view from the position of the child. Realists and cynics (oddly enough, people like me) raised one eyebrow. They wanted the whole truth. Also, as with many first books, The Marvelous Journey Home was not incredibly sturdy as far as writing goes. I like to think that my later work shows some progress.
To Sing Frogs is raw and brutal honesty. It will make you cry with happiness and sadness. It will make you laugh and it might just encourage you to use that word with an exclamation point in the middle. To Sing Frogs isn’t so much the story of our first adoptions from Russia as it is the story about how it affected our family and particularly, me. In the book I refer to my wife as a “God works in mysterious ways believer.” I’m a realist and a cynic. That allows the view of what happens and how it happens to be interpreted by the reader.
Do you plan to write any more books?
As we were finalizing the adoptions of Sarah, Celeste and Denney, we learned that Sarah and Celeste had older biological siblings who were in other Russian orphanages. I am currently writing a book about the partially successful attempt at locating those siblings and joining them to our family. The book is called Sneg, which translates into English as Snow.
What one thing could you tell people to help them believe that adoption can work for their families too?
If you are on a quest to save the world or to save a child, adoption probably won’t work for you. Join the Peace Corps instead. If you want a child so badly that you can’t imagine living without them… If you need that child so much it doesn’t matter if you need to move heaven and hell to get her… If you are willing to fight with your partner and lightly neglect your other children to get what you want more than anything else in the world, then adoption will work for you. And it will be one of the most incredible and worthwhile experiences of your life.
I have not gotten a chance to get through John’s books yet, but if you’d like to find a copy of Marvelous Journey Home
What has been your favorite part of this series?
