Part travelogue, part recollection of the author's childhood in Nebraska, and part history of international adoption, this book should be on reading lists for anyone interested in adoptive families, or simply the modern American family.
While Mr. Eske's brother and sisters were chosen from around the world before settling in Nebraska, the Eske family dynamic will be familiar to anyone with younger siblings. The book does a fantastic job of realistically portraying the balance of normal family relationships with the often heartrending complications of physical disabilities and emotional trauma from the previous lives of adopted children. Mr. Eske is very aware throughout the book of his privilege and the special circumstances of his family. He also writes with modesty, humbleness, and a sharp sense of humor about himself - seen most clearly in the travel portions of the book. The anecdotes about traveling with friends in India to see both tourist haunts and the orphanage from which three of his siblings were adopted fit together seamlessly while still conveying the jarring contrasts between the expectations of a group of American students and the realities of the country they traveled. Mr. Eske has a knack for words and a special knack for drawing subtle comparisons that pull the reader in - for example, the author's description of the overwhelming atmosphere of monsoon season and the overwhelming emotion when hugged by the woman who ran the orphanage he visited. Dancing to Beyonce in the lobby of an Ethiopian hotel with a hotel worker before visiting that hotel worker's house in the slums of Addis portrays in a few crystallized moments of human interaction the author's earlier musings on globalization as something that, for all of his study, was still mysterious.
In the afterword to this gem of a book, Mr. Eske makes reference to a friend who says that it is quite ridiculous for someone in their twenties to write about themselves, acknowledging with casual self-effacement the unvoiced claims of those who would say that no one so young could offer a significant memoir. Without having picked up this book, I would have thought that yes - a quarter-century memoir would have nothing of substance to offer the casual reader. However, I am very glad that Mr. Eske took it upon himself to document the first two and a half decades of his life and the story of his family. By doing so, he has shed light into the very real struggles and triumphs of creating a family through adoption and giving children in need of a family the love and support they need, no matter where they grow up.
I picked up this book on a Saturday morning and whizzed through it by the afternoon - it is an engaging, poignant, and most of all honest portrait of one man rediscovering the ties that link him with his family and made him the person who he is today. Each story that Mr. Eske tells (the advent of international adoption, the orphanages and countries where these adoptions occur, harried parents raising five children in the Midwest) has its own merit. However when these aspects of international adoption are linked by the author's personal narrative, they become more than the sum of their parts. Mr. Eske's life story may be uncommon, but his narrative is even more extraordinary due to the beautifully mundane aspects of family life he celebrates in this book as a family is created and grows together.
