WORDS

In the memoir, Someone Else’s Children, the author coaxes her reluctant husband to fly with her to Siberia to adopt a teenage Russian girl, only to have this child upset the carefully-honed equilibrium in the household.

A marriage veteran with five grown children—bio, step, and adopted—and resolved to offer one more child a leg up in the world, the author recalls her earlier struggles mothering teens, a tricky process exacerbated when children are marked by the death of parents, abandonment, divorce. Add in language and cultural differences and the complexities increase.

Though the painful clashes between mother and this new daughter are buoyed by tender moments, the author falls short of the ideal parent she’d aspired to be, and this third marriage is strained. Only when it becomes painfully clear that love isn’t enough, does the author accept that it isn’t only adopted children who must adapt.