Chloe Pinter works at the Chosen Child Adoption Agency as
director of its domestic program, matching families with
children of birth mothers who don't plan to keep their
babies for whatever reason. She has an album of happy
pictures of herself with beaming new parents and the babes
they've adopted, but one of her adoptions seems to be
going off-track. When she visits Jason and Penny, a poor
couple giving up their baby for adoption, she finds a
crib in their apartment. They have an excuse for the crib,
but she warns the adoptive parents, Francie and John McAdoo,
setting off events that quickly spiral out of control. The
other couple who play an important role in this story are
Paul and Eva Nova, former clients of Chloe's who will have a
baby of their own once Eva gives birth. Things really heat
up when a baby goes missing.
Without giving away too many details, suffice it to say
that some people will stop at nothing to get what they
want. As the lives of these three families and Chloe
become entwined, Chloe is also dealing with her
relationship with her surfer bum boyfriend. All the pieces
make for a pretty good storyline.
Chandra Hoffman had a great idea for a story when she set
out to explore the world of open adoptions. Having worked
in a position similar to Chloe's, she clearly knows about
what she writes. My quibbles with the novel are that the
characters— both good and bad— are a bit too far on either
end of the spectrum to be entirely believable. That said,
Chloe's character is more realistic than some of the others,
giving us insight into the stress of her job, and her
feelings, emotions, and dreams.
The story shifts viewpoints among a number of characters,
but Hoffman tells the reader at the beginning of each
chapter from whose viewpoint it comes, so there's no
guesswork involved. Among the chapters, Hoffman also
includes posts from Francie McAdoo on a local adoption board.
The different viewpoints make the story more interesting,
and the element of suspense keeps the pages turning. My
quibbles aside, for readers interested in learning more
about how adoption works, I recommend picking up this
novel.
n Chosen, a young caseworker becomes increasingly
entangled in the lives of adoptive and birth parents, with
devastating results.
It all begins
with a fantasy: the caseworker in her "signing paperwork"
charcoal suit standing alongside beaming parents cradling
their adopted newborn, set against a fluorescent-lit
delivery-room backdrop. It's this blissful picture that
keeps Chloe Pinter, director of the Chosen Child's
domestic-adoption program, happy while juggling the high
demands of her boss and the incessant needs of both adoptive
and biological parents.
But the very job that
offers her refuge from her turbulent personal life and
Portland's winter rains soon becomes a battleground
involving three very different couples: the Novas, well-off
college sweethearts who suffered fertility problems but are
now expecting their own baby; the McAdoos, a wealthy husband
and desperate wife for whom adoption is a last chance; and
Jason and Penny, an impoverished couple who have
nothing—except the baby everyone wants. When a child goes
missing, dreams dissolve into nightmares, and everyone is
forced to examine what he or she really wants and where it
all went wrong.
Told from alternating points of
view, Chosen reveals the desperate nature of desire
across social backgrounds and how far people will go to get
the one thing they think will be the answer.
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