Grace from China

Grace from China

by Jacqueline A. Kolosov

ISBN: 0-9638472-8-7

Hardcover

Price: US $16.00 

Pages: 179

    "Jess is a smart, modern heroine with whom readers, young and old, will identify. Her journey to China to find, and bring home, Grace is an engaging, well-informed introduction to the adoption process. GRACE FROM CHINA is equally a story about healing and the rebuilding of families through opening one's heart to love. In the process, the reader and Jess grow wings."

     Congratulations to Jacqueline Kolosov for having written a beautiful book that addresses a complex issue of our contemporary times."

                               Mary Swander, author of The Desert Pilgrim

Mom turned around and smiled. Her face was bright red, and tears shone in her eyes - was it the wind?
    "Thank goodness you're home."  Her breathless voice radiated excitement. "I'm planting flowers because I had to get out of the house. I haven't been able to sit still since I got the news."
            I took a step away from her. That familiar, anxious feeling took hold. "News? What news?"
            "The adoption - it's finally gone through! The Chinese government has granted us permission to adopt a little girl."
           Mom's face positively glowed. She reached out a hand to me. "She's waiting for us, Jess."

Fourteen-year-old Jess is only just coming to terms with her father's death in a car accident. Until now she believed her mother put aside the family's plan to adopt a daughter from China. But a year has passed, Xiao Ting is ready to be picked up from her orphanage, and Jess is having second thoughts..

"No,” Emily said, laying a clenched fist on the table, "you can't. Maybe this trip to China will be the best thing for you. You'll face people and situations you've never experienced before.” Emily's voice broke off, and she smiled, really smiled. "You'll bring home a little sister, and maybe you'll start to believe that good things can come out of bad ones.”

Still walled up by grief, Jess doesn't want to hear what her best friend has to say, but within a matter of weeks she's traveling to China accompanied by her mother, seven other families, and one energetic adoption facilitator. Among her traveling companions is fifteen-year-old Winnie Moore, who was adopted from China thirteen years earlier. Like Jess, Winnie has lost a parent. Yet Jess quickly discovers that Winnie isn't quite like anyone she's ever met before…

China, too, holds many surprises. A country with a long, complex history and an uncertain future, this strange land is the birthplace of her new sister, Xiao Ting. Until she gets there, how can Jess possibly begin to imagine that she, too, will come to feel connected to a country thousands of miles from home? How can she predict what the trip and her new sister hold in store for her? How can she understand why the Chinese birth family could not keep their daughter? How can she believe that Emily's words just might come true?

 Jacqueline Kolosov grew up just north of Chicago and earned a doctorate in English Literature at New York University. She currently lives in west Texas where she teaches creative writing and literature at Texas Tech University. She is passionate about writing, art, yoga, long distance running and animals, in particular her Welsh corgi, Edward. Jacqueline also writes and publishes poetry and has published three biographies for young adults. Look for some of her writing under the name Jacqueline McLean.