At the beginning of June, I took a trip to the outlets with my friends. We do so about twice a year to get appropriate seasonal clothing at good prices for our kiddos. And to talk, eat and simply “be” without interruption by our children. It’s heavenly and I look forward to it like a kid looks to Christmas morning.
We happened into a little bookstore. I hit the kids’ section first, meandered around a table of “super on sale” books and finally began to look at the books on the wall. I judge books by their covers. I do. While some people might not like headless women on covers, I am somehow drawn to them. I only picked up one book off the shelf that day, drawn in by its cover and the title, Crybaby Ranch.
I flipped it over, read the back and cussed.
When an argument over pineapple pizza reveals to jewelry maker Suzannah Perry the truth about her stale marriage, she wastes no time leaving her husband in Ohio for a ramshackle cabin in the foothills of Wyoming’s majestic Teton Range. As she strings necklaces, she works on untangling her most complicated relationships: with the mother she’s losing to Alzheimer’s, with the adopted son who has spent his life chasing after his birth mother, and most of all, with her new home’s previous owner, easygoing “Marlboro Man” Bo Garrett.
Emphasis my own.
I walked over to my friends, shoved the book in their faces and said, “How do these things find me?” It was honestly the only book I had picked up in the entire store. I didn’t even touch one of the kids’ books for my sons. It was as if this book had a siren song made only for me. And I crashed right into it.
I bought the book. Obviously. I had to. The good news is that the book is really not about adoption. In fact, I don’t think the words adopted, adoption or adoptee are used at all in the book. The son is a very minor character. The only interaction that he really has with Suzannah is when she calls him out for never really calling her mom or treating her like a mom (on things like Mother’s Day). The birth mother is mentioned a handfull of times: She left the husband and the son. Suzannah? Was the babysitter and eventually married the father.
There was no deep-delving into adoption issues. I can’t claim this as an Adoption Reading Challenge book because it wasn’t. It did, however, have some interesting discussions on Alzheimer’s and watching our parents age. I didn’t hate the book, but it wasn’t really something I’d suggest to other readers either. My mom stole it from me while we were on vacation and read it. As she spends her days with senior citizens, she found the caring for an aging parent to be interesting, though I’m not sure she liked the rest of the book or the name of the band — which even my husband said was a “little much.” (No, really. “Your Sister’s Cherry.” I snorted my beach beer reading that line.)
The book that I’m currently reading for BlogHer’s Book Club, The Beach Trees, has a dead-mom, guardianship, family wants custody kind of storyline to it. Of course. I don’t know yet if they will make it an important theme or if it will remain a minor counterpoint in the book. If it does become a main theme, I’ll be sure to add it to the Adoption Reading Challenge review link so you all can check it out as well.
And then, oh man, I’m taking an adoption reading break. Hopefully. I don’t think I’ve read a book that didn’t contain some minor mention of adoption in a very, very long time. Years maybe.
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