After Frank and Ellie Benton lose their only son to illness, they accept a job in India where Frank's obsession with a young boy named Ramesh has stark consequences.
Twelve-year-old Alice, an orphan who has never been adopted because of her physical handicap and difficult personality, is shocked to discover she has an identical twin sister living nearby.
Sixteen-year-old atheist Simone Turner-Bloom's life changes in unexpected ways when her parents convince her to make contact with her biological mother, an agnostic from a Jewish family who is losing her battle with cancer.
While visiting her younger sister Mollie, Beth confronts painful memories of the sudden death of her parents and the subsequent adoption of the sisters by different families.
The smiling moon watches over a baby girl in China whose parents love her but cannot take care of her, and guides a childless couple that lives far away to the daughter for whom they yearn.
Alternating passages describe the experiences of a mother and her biological daughter when each is sixteen-years-old, as one becomes unexpectedly pregnant and the other decides whether to find her birth mother.
Contains fourteen articles in which the authors debate issues related to gay marriage, homophobia, gay adoption and parenting, family support for gay and lesbian children, and the role of religion in gay marriage.
