Nine months after bringing their adopted daughter Angelina home, Jack and Melissa McGuane receive a devastating phone call from the adoption agency: the birth father, a teenager and son of a powerful Denver judge, never signed away his parental rights, and he wants Angelina back.

From "Adoptive Families "magazine, the country's leading resource on adoption, this warm, authoritative book is full of practical, realistic advice from leading attorneys, doctors, social workers, and psychologists, as well as honest, intimate stories from real parents and children.

"When Nefertiti Austin, a single African-American woman, decided to adopt two black children through the foster system, she was unprepared for the fact that there is no place for black women in the 'mommy wars.' Austin set off on her path with no place to seek guidance from others who looked like her or shared her experience. She soon realized that she would not only have to navigate skepticism from the adoption community, who deal almost exclusively...

Wendy and Rip Porter are a working-class couple fighting to regain custody of Joey, the young son Wendy gave up for adoption when Rip went to prison seven years earlier. But Joey's adoptive parents will stop at nothing to ensure that the small boy stays in the only home he's ever known.

"Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers--which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues. To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for...

"Though they look like any other family, they aren't one--not quite. They are three sets of parents who find themselves intertwined after adopting four biological siblings, having committed to keeping the children as connected as possible. At the heart of the family, the mothers grapple to define themselves and their new roles. Tabitha, who adopted the twins, crowns herself planner of the group, responsible for endless playdates and holidays, determined...

"Nicole Chung couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in - where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations - looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew...