The Red Thread, by Ann Hood (2010)

I loved this book! It's not often I will forgo sleep to finish a book, but I really couldn't put this one down.

The book follows Maya Lange, owner of a private adoption agency, The Red Thread, which brings together orphaned and abandoned girls from China with families in the United States. The book shows us both sides of the story, weaving together the lives of the Chinese mothers and fathers who are faced with the decision to give up their baby girls and the lives of the American families who are brave or desperate enough to travel half way around the world to adopt a child.

With the Chinese government levying a cap on how many children families can have, the need for a son to take care of the parents forces many families to choose to give up their girls secretly for adoption so they can try again to have a boy. If found out, they can be punished by the government (and sometimes by the baby's father who is pushing the mother to give up the daughter) and made to take back their infants. So mothers must sneak into nearby cities and leave the baby in parks, docks, wherever they feel is the best chance for the child to be found quickly.

On the other side we get to know the lives of couples who are wanting to adopt and learn how they cope with the stress of a strenuous and lengthy adoption process. Lives falter as the wait for news pushes some couples to the brink, leaning time and again on the solid shoulder of Maya Lange, whose own secret tragedy was the impetus for her life's work to find homes for unwanted children.