Although Emily Buchanan had a highly successful career in broadcasting and a loving husband there was something missing from her life: she desperately wanted children. After the trauma of three miscarriages, Emily and her husband Gerald were forced to accept the knowledge that they would not be able to have children of their own and decided to look into adoption. Their desire to have a very young baby led them to consider an adoption from abroad. As a journalist Emily knew only too well the sad plight of many children in the world trafficked to desperate couples and determined that her child had to come from a country where adoption was properly regulated. In this touching story Emily describes their first meeting with Jade Lin, who had been left on the steps of an orphanage in a small town in Inner Mongolia just after she had been born. Unlike many of the thousands of less fortunate babies abandoned each year in China, Jade Lin had been placed with a foster family before being approved for adoption and allocated to a family. It was love at first sight for Emily and Gerald, but they still had obstacles of language and culture to cross, as well as dealing with the reaction of friends and family back at home. This diary tells in vivid detail the highs and lows of Emily's journey to motherhood.
"extraordinarily brave and honest, and written with great clarity. I can't remember reading anything on the subject that was as open, ... or done with as much dignity. ...neither of us could puit it down, and we were both very moved by it. John Simpson
"A delightful and candid account of a quest for much wanted children." Kate Adie
"A factual and honest account of a mother's journey in adopting two daughters from China." Adeline Yen Mah