Between Light and Shadow

ai??An adoption professional once told me ai??At its best there is no adoption system as good as Guatemalaa's. At its worst there is none worse.a'ai??a"from the foreword by Kevin KreutnerIn Between Light and Shadow veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry which has exploited embraced and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the Central American nationa's poorest children. Fourteen-year-old Ellie abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan is at the centre of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Elliea's abandonment her adoption and Americanization her search for her birth mother and her joyous and haunting return to Guatemala where she finds her teenage brothersa"unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders.Following Elliea's journey Wheeler peels back the layers of an adoption economy that some view as an unscrupulous baby-selling industry that manipulates impoverished indigenous Guatemalan women and others herald as the only chance for poor children to have a better life. Through Ellie Wheeler allows us to see what all this means in personal and practical termsa"and to understand how well-intentioned and sometimes humanitarian first-world wealth can collide with the extreme poverty despair misogyny racism and violent history of Guatemala.