Customer Reviews

White Male Infant

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Caution:
This Book should not be read by anyone either considering adoption or anyone who has recently completed an adoption! While the story is intriguing and at times gripping, it involves an international baby selling organization that commits the most heinous of all crimes in order to "match" very high paying prospective adoptive couples with their "perfect" baby. As the story unfolds, the reader is sickened and horrified by the callousness of this highly successful "adoption agency" juxtaposed with the vivid descriptions of depraved conditions forced upon orphaned babies in Russia.

Overall, "White Male Infant" is a good mystery story which does alert readers to the very real and desperate plight of waiting babies and children all over the world. However, it also enacts every parents' (both adoptive and biological) worst nightmare and will absolutely cause anxiety to any adoptive parent. Read it with caution!

When he discovers that his adopted son could not have been the Russian baby the agency claimed, Dr. Dooley McSweeny fears the worst--that his wonderful child may have been kidnapped to order. The huge fees that agencies charge certainly would provide motivation--especially for beautiful red-headed and green eyed sons. Dooley obsesses over his fears, finally returning to Russia to seek the truth. But can he, or his marriage, survive the truth when he finds it?

With parallel investigations by a news reporter and an FBI agent, Dooley gradually learns the horrible truth--that an adoption agency specializes in finding exactly the kind of baby that infertile couples demand and in turn, it commands fees that range upward of a quarter of a million dollars.

Author Barbara D'Amato taps into the fears of every parent, and every adoptive parent. The concept of using Russia and similar countries for baby-laundering is clever and convincingly portrayed. Dooley's dilemma is horribly real and effectively narrated. Likewise, reporter Gabrielle Coulter's story is compelling--both in her search for the story behind the huge need for international adoption .... In contrast, D'Amato's villains come across as cartoon-like, motivated only by greed and with no moral scruples, or even common sense.

"White Male Infant" is a timely novel about foreign adoption. While it relies heavily on coincidence, it is still a page-turner and kept me guessing most of the way through.

Dr. Dooley McSweeney is faced with a terrible decision: should he try to find his adoptive son's real parents and risk having to give him back to them? This thought haunts him day and night and he is consumed by fear and anxiety, moving through his days on auto-pilot.

Keeping his wife, Claudia, in the dark, he begins doing research on his own. He then hires investigators and heads to Russia in an attempt to put his demons to rest. When he gets there he meets an undercover FBI team and a CNN investigator whose cameraman was murdered. The plot begins to thicken at this point.

The visits to Russian orphanages described by D'Amato are so painful and horrible that they defy belief, yet I suspect that this is the way many of them are.

In plots that involve a CNN investigation, several murders, kidnappings, a baby-selling cartel, and the FBI, the author puts together a fast-paced medical thriller.

The blurb was more interesting than the book itself was. An American couple adopt a Russian child, only he may not be Russian-born after all. So boring that I can't remember the end (though I skim-read about the last 150 pages). Couldn't grab my attention. (C)

Dooley, Claudia and little Teddy McSweeney form the perfect little family until the applecart is overturned wreaking havoc in their idyllic world.

Dooley is a surgical pathologist and his wife Claudia is an attorney. After years of unsuccessful attempts at having a biological child, the couple travels to Russia to adopt a little boy. But they do not just want ANY little boy. They want a child that will look like he was, in fact, their own biological child -- one with red hair and green eyes. My immediate thought here was, "Why go to Russia and not to Ireland if this is what you're looking for?" But lo and behold, right there in one of the largest orphanages, in one of the coldest sections of Russia, is a little four-month-old, red haired, green-eyed boy just waiting to be adopted. Right then and there I would have become suspicious but it's not until four years later, when little Teddy gets ill and has some medical tests done, that his father Dooley's suspicions are aroused -- aroused enough to impel him to travel back to Russia in an effort to learn Teddy's true parentage. He is quite sure of one thing though -- there's no way Teddy truly could have come from Russia. But then, where DID he come from???

This is a story that had a great and exciting premise but I just felt the author never really went anywhere with it. The characters are all deadpan and the chapters flit back and forth between simultaneous stories that should all mesh together in the end. Unfortunately, when they do, it is almost anticlimactic leaving the reader searching for more. It's not that the author doesn't neatly tie up the ending because she does. It's just that it's tied up too coldly -- perhaps indicative of the Russian setting in most of the book.

Surgeon Dooley McSweeney and his wife Claudia worries about the health of their adopted son as they fear he has leukemia. Thankfully, the infection turns out to be mononucleosis. However, they also learn that Teddy's bone sample displays evidence of the antibiotic tetracycline, a drug the McSweeney never provided to their son nor could the dirt-poor Russian orphanage be able to have obtained it. It seems that Teddy never came from Russia so Dooley begins a quest to learn more about Teddy's past.

In Moscow, celebrity reporter Gabrielle Coulter is stunned when someone kills her video-photographer and destroys their tapes that expose horrid conditions at a local orphanage. Though the circumstantial evidence points towards Mother Russia zealots, Gabrielle believes the motives are more evil and economic. Soon her search for the truth joins the McSweeney efforts, but a bottom line only adoption factory mill do anything even murder of innocent little ones to keep the profits high.

This is an exciting thriller that will shake readers with what feels like a modern day Charles Dickens tale of child abuse caused by an orphanage manufacturing plant. The story line is action packed yet quite emotional as the audience will feel for the children and the McSweeneys. Fans of taut thrillers that provide a deep message will want to read D'Amato's tale.

Harriet Klausner

Barbara D'Amato taps into every adoptive parent's nightmare with WHITE MALE INFANTE.
There is big money in the adoption business for the perfect child that fits the specifications of the prospective parents.
Dr. Dooley McSweeny and his wife love their green eyed, red-headed son from Russia, but when Dr. McSweeny discovers his child did not come from Russia there is only one other conclusion, he was stolen.
Running parallel to Dr. McSweeny's search for the truth is an FBI agent and a journalist who have other agendas. Will the McSweeny have to return their child if the real parents are discovered?
International intrigue, a strained marriage, and their very lives may rest on his discovering the truth.
Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.

I thought the premise of this book was terrific. What adoptive parent was doesn't worry and wonder about their child's background? But the book went downhill after a great start.

Several other reviewers have mentioned the "cartoonish" characters and I have to agree.

Too much of a downer for me, after a great beginning.

I really enjoyed it. It's a interesting, different-than-the ususal story line.