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摘要
摘要
"Beyond the headlines, Losing Jessica is Robby DeBoer's personal and very moving account of the battle to keep her baby daughter." "On August 2, 1993, Robby and Jan DeBoer were forced to give up the little girl that they had raised, since infancy, for two and a half years. In a decision that shocked the entire country, the courts ruled that Jessi DeBoer was to be taken from the only parents and the only home she had ever known and given back to the biological parents who were virtual strangers to her." "How do you say goodbye to your daughter?" "Losing Jessica is more than the story of a court battle. This is Robby's own story - of the hopes and dreams with which she and Jan began their marriage, and of the tremendous struggles that followed. Robby eloquently describes what it was like to meet her daughter for the first time, after years of trying to adopt. We feel her elation at the moment when she and Jan are awarded custody of the baby at the termination hearing, and we feel her pain and distress when she learns that the man who had signed the adoption papers might not be Jessi's biological father after all. Robby's story highlights the complications and inequities of a legal system that places the biological rights of birth parents above those of the adoptive parents - and makes decisions without regard to the best interests of the child. Above all, Losing Jessica is the story of a mother's unequivocal love for her child, the strongest, most compelling, and most unbreakable human bond of all."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
Although DeBoer lobbies mightily for children's rights here, her self-interest, expressed with extreme emotionalism, underpins this vexed book and ultimately obscures that larger issue. The author re-creates her custody battle over her adopted daughter, Jessica, who was born out of wedlock to Clara Clausen on February 7, 1991, and returned to her birth parents on August 2, 1993. During the course of the custody hearings, Clara married her daughter's biological father, Dan Schmidt, who had not legally renounced claim to his child; the case was argued in both Iowa, where the Schmidts live, and Michigan, home state of the author and her husband, Jan. DeBoer presents her household as utterly child-centered: in her account, she devoted all of her time to Jessica, and Jan frequently took days off from his job as a printer to be with his child. The Schmidts are shown only to their discredit: Clara initially named her fiance as the father of her child, although she was simultaneously sexually intimate with Dan, a truck driver, who years earlier had abandoned two children he had fathered by two different women. The psychic and financial turmoil caused to the DeBoers and to their families by the custody battle is made so palpable that readers will weep; yet the Schmidts' anguish, which one assumes to have been no less real, is not considered in these pages. DeBoer wants us to see Jessica as victimized by the legal system, which favors biological parents, but thoughtful readers will need a disinterested account of the case before deciding. Photos not seen by PW . 100,000 first printing; first serial to Redbook; author tour. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
A sincere but tedious rehashing of the ``Baby Jessica'' saga by former adoptive mother DeBoer. In the summer of 1993, Baby Jessica, now known as Anna Schmidt, was returned to her biological parents after a two-year court battle that captured worldwide attention. Shortly after relinquishing her baby for adoption, birth mother Cara Schmidt began to mourn deeply. To cope with her pain, according to DeBoer, Cara attended a meeting of Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), whose philosophy is that ``short of kidnapping and murder, this [separation from her baby] is the most horrible, unnatural loss a mother can endure.'' And so Cara Schmidt began her efforts to regain the baby she had hastily and conveniently surrendered. It is DeBoer's contention that had Cara not connected with CUB, Baby Jessica would be living a secure life with her adoptive parents. DeBoer strives for objectivity, but generally fails. Just as Cara and Dan Schmidt appear never see the DeBoers as anything more than temporary caretakers who have made a media circus out of their tragedy, the DeBoers see the Schmidts as mere ``baby machines'' who created a product that they initially abandoned. The result is ugly. Dan Schmidt is portrayed as a violent and negligent father whose court papers show that ``he has previously failed to raise or support his other two children.'' On the other side, DeBoer writes, a handful of criminal dirt committed by her husband, Jan, as a teenager is dug up and slung. While Jan considered fleeing the country with Jessica--a rare revelation here--Robby leapt to the media to publicize her plea that ``the bias of the courts towards biology'' would jeopardize her daughter's well-being. A sometimes absorbing, often superficial memoir that is far less meaty than the New Yorker's treatment of a year ago. (Two eight-page inserts of b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Redbook; author tour)
《书目》(Booklist)书评
The long, painful court battle over whether adoptive parents Jan and Robby DeBoer or birth parents Cara Clausen and Dan Schmidt should have custody of Baby Jessica (now Baby Anna) share center stage here with a moving narrative of Jessi's two and a half years with the DeBoers. Clearly, telling this story has been a form of therapy for the author, and it is difficult to disagree with her insistence that the best interest of the child should be a central concern in custody conflicts. The problem is that opinions about what is in the best interest of an adopted child are highly polarized--even politicized--with proponents of traditional and open adoptions almost as dug into their positions as those who shake signs at each other outside abortion clinics. In the adoption controversy, the DeBoers have come to represent the closed-adoption agenda of conservative groups such as the National Council for Adoption, and Robby DeBoer blames open-adoption activists in Concerned United Birthparents for many of her problems. The heavy media exposure the DeBoer-Schmidt case received in 1993 and Doubleday's aggressive promotion plans for Losing Jessica guarantee interest, but DeBoer's affecting testimony should be balanced by the open-adoption story, exemplified in Betty Jean Lifton's Journey of the Adopted Self. (Reviewed June 1994)038547458XMary Carroll
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
This story-behind-the-story of Robby and Jan DeBoer's battle to keep their adopted daughter will get coverage on the Today show, a 15-city author tour, and a 100,000-copy first printing. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.