Rating: 
Summary: A Rich Tapestry of Truth & Beauty
Review: "A Ghost at Heart's Edge" is a rich tapestry of truth, beauty and pain, woven with heartfelt honesty. It offers rarely seen glimpses into all facets of adoption, not just the standard "joyous" reunions that are always more complex in real life than in TV drama. It should be required reading for anyone considering adoption. For those already adopted or who have adopted a child, it will ring with boldly familiar truth. I am pleased to be included in this groundbreaking work.
Rating:
Summary: A Rich Tapestry of Truth & Beauty
Review: "A Ghost at Heart's Edge" is a rich tapestry of truth, beauty and pain, woven with heartfelt honesty. It offers rarely seen glimpses into all facets of adoption, not just the standard "joyous" reunions that are always more complex in real life than in TV drama. It should be required reading for anyone considering adoption. For those already adopted or who have adopted a child, it will ring with boldly familiar truth. I am pleased to be included in this groundbreaking work.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Literate Adoption Reader
Review: As as adoptive mom & as a writer, I find it hard to locate books that satisfy my yearning for both literary fulfillment AND insight into the "triad" that is Adotpion. "Ghost at Heart's Edge" is that rare book; It's elevating intellectually, an imaginative opening (lots of them) while giving deep thought to what adoption, at its "heart" entails. This is not a "reunion" book, good though those are, nor is it a psychological tome, good though theory can be for understanding. Rather, this compendium is literature of a high order and insight with unusual depth. I've carried my copy, literally, from East coast to West, from Canada to Hawaii, hoping to meet one of the editors and get it signed. Along the way, I dip in and out of these poems and stories, and am never anything but fully immersed. Highly recommended, and not just for those who are in Adoptive world, but for us with a hole in our hearts or, better said by the editors, with a Ghost at the Heart's Edge, which includes virtually all of us. Yes? Yes!
Rating:
Summary: A Family Treasure
Review: Susan Ito and Tina Cervin have skillfully compiled a beautiful meditation that challenges our most insidious assumptions of what it means to be a True Family. Required reading for anyone with a beating heart.
Rating:
Summary: Thankfully lacking in sap!
Review: The main thing that distinguishes this anthology from many other books about adoption is its literary, unsentimental approach. Unlike the usual humourless depictions, this book goes for depth instead of decibel level, mind over melodrama. It also includes some oft-ignored perspectives such as that of a birthfather, birth-grandparents, adoptive grandparents and adoptees whose reunion stories are not the spangly stuff of the 6 o'clock news. As a contributor to the anthology, I am proud to find my work in such good company. As a reader, I appreciate its literary treatment. As an adoptee, I'm moved by the unflinching accounts.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful collection of adoption stories
Review: This book is probably the most balanced collection of stories I've ever read about adoption from all different viewpoints. I love this book and highly recommend it to anyone touched by adoption.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book, not for adoptees alone
Review: This is a wonderful book also for readers who don't have any experience of adoption. I was swept away by the sheer beauty and quality of the writing. An impressive and diverse array of writers such as Chitra Dvakaruni, Isabel Allende, Alison Lurie, and George Rabasa all explore different facets of parental love, family lines, and belonging. This is the best book I have read since GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE.
Rating:
Summary: Full of reality, wonderfully executed
Review: This type of book has been needed for a long time. A very real collection that looks at the joys of adoption without shrinking from the loss and pain. Should be required reading for prospective adoptive parents and potential birthparents.
Rating: 
Summary: A groundbreaking literary anthology of adoption.
Review: While there are many nonfiction books available on adoption, AGhost at Heart's Edge is the only book which contains adoptionliterature, in the form of short stories and poetry. Written by both well-known and novice authors, including Alison Lurie, Isabel Allende, Sandra McPherson, Louise Erdrich, Chitra Divakaruni, and Lynna Williams, this collection conveys the wide range of emotions involved for all of those touched by adoption, including thirty million people in the United States today. A Ghost at Heart's Edge contains fifty stories and poems from all points of view of the adoption triad: birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees. Broken into five sections, this anthology represents the many stages in the adoption process. The first, Waiting, chronicles the lives of individuals before the adoption process occurs. The second, Passage, contains material about the period of transition when the child moves from one family to another. The third section, Growing, concentrates on stories of children and adolescents-mostly adoptee/adoptive parent stories and poems. The fourth section, Identity, contains material on the questioning period that all members of the triad go through, including question of roots, ethnicity, and family roles. The last section, Relations, deals with reunions. A Ghost at Heart's Edge is multicultural, containing stories from African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, Indian Americans and Native Americans. Also included are stories about Americans who adopt babies (or try to) from other countries (Alison Lurie's "Waiting for the Baby"), and often from a racial background other than their own. There are voices from parents who adopt these children (Janet Jerve's "The Naturalization of Anna Lee") and from the children themselves ("Summer of My Korean Soldier"). Foster parents and foster children's experiences are presented (Marian Matthew Clark's "Just for the Time Being") as are siblings' (Charles Baxter's "A Relative Stranger"). While these stories take place in such varied places as Nebraska, Rome, New Orleans, India and Korea and are as unique as the individuals telling them, they are also universal in their depiction of human longing for identity and family.
Rating:
Summary: Head and shoulders above most adoption-related books!
Review: Wow! What an achievement, it bowled me over, I stayed up until 3 am and had sand eyes all day the next day. Heartfelt thanks. Like reading the songs from my own heart.
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