The Earthquake Child is the story of an adoption, told through the voices of an adoptee, his desperate young birth mother, and his loving but grieving adoptive mother.
How can Joshua’s behavior be explained? This question is all-consuming for his adoptive family. Joshua was relinquished at birth, then adopted only days later. Is it his genetic inheritance of substance abuse and generational poverty that causes him to act out, run away and eventually become involved with drugs? Is it the losses he’s experienced in his adoptive family? Or is it the very fact of adoption itself—the trauma of being amputated from his gestational mother to be raised by a family unrelated to him by blood, culture, or biology?
What makes our children who they are? These voices and questions will resonate with all parents, but particularly with those who are or have been part of the adoption triangle: adoptees, mothers who have relinquished a child, and parents who’ve added a child to their family through adoption.
Genre: Literary Fiction
How can Joshua’s behavior be explained? This question is all-consuming for his adoptive family. Joshua was relinquished at birth, then adopted only days later. Is it his genetic inheritance of substance abuse and generational poverty that causes him to act out, run away and eventually become involved with drugs? Is it the losses he’s experienced in his adoptive family? Or is it the very fact of adoption itself—the trauma of being amputated from his gestational mother to be raised by a family unrelated to him by blood, culture, or biology?
What makes our children who they are? These voices and questions will resonate with all parents, but particularly with those who are or have been part of the adoption triangle: adoptees, mothers who have relinquished a child, and parents who’ve added a child to their family through adoption.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"A riveting familial rollercoaster, The Earthquake Child portrays one mother's determination to raise a child. Bravo to Elayne Klasson for so honestly describing the ripple effects of adoption, for child, birth parents, and adoptive parents. This is a gripping story wrought with emotion and truth." - Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg
"Elation, sadness, disappointment, rage, and love explode from the pages of The Earthquake Child - emotions rendered even more compelling as they are experienced through the alternating perspectives of an adopted boy, his birth-mother, and his adoptive family. A moving and evocative tale, consummately constructed, and beautifully told." - Robert Steven Goldstein
"Elayne Klasson's second novel, The Earthquake Child, demonstrates her psychologically sophisticated treatment of a woman's journey toward building a family. Anyone who has ever had to send a child away for his safety will relate to Klasson's authentic, sensitive portrayal of that agony. This deeply affecting, well-told story has no villains or heroes. Rather, good human beings trying to address the hurdles of forming and blending families, never knowing which challenges for an adopted child are just tremors, which will become major quakes, and how to manage expectations in the aftershocks. Don't miss this book." - Barbara Stark-Nemon
"The Earthquake Child is a clear-eyed look at the most complicated of family lives, bound tightly by loyalty and ineradicable love." - Susan Straight
"Elation, sadness, disappointment, rage, and love explode from the pages of The Earthquake Child - emotions rendered even more compelling as they are experienced through the alternating perspectives of an adopted boy, his birth-mother, and his adoptive family. A moving and evocative tale, consummately constructed, and beautifully told." - Robert Steven Goldstein
"Elayne Klasson's second novel, The Earthquake Child, demonstrates her psychologically sophisticated treatment of a woman's journey toward building a family. Anyone who has ever had to send a child away for his safety will relate to Klasson's authentic, sensitive portrayal of that agony. This deeply affecting, well-told story has no villains or heroes. Rather, good human beings trying to address the hurdles of forming and blending families, never knowing which challenges for an adopted child are just tremors, which will become major quakes, and how to manage expectations in the aftershocks. Don't miss this book." - Barbara Stark-Nemon
"The Earthquake Child is a clear-eyed look at the most complicated of family lives, bound tightly by loyalty and ineradicable love." - Susan Straight
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