Happy Family

by Wendy LeeGrove/Atlantic

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Hua, a new immigrant to New York from China, befriends city mom Jane and her infant daughter, Lily, who was adopted from China. When Jane offers Hua a job as Lily's babysitter, she accepts, and becomes fiercely attached to the little girl, who reminds her of her own past.
The outsider's perspective on an American family, and on intercountry adoption, is interesting, though you may lose sympathy for Hua by the novel's end.

"'Well, if they do split up, I feel sorry for Lily.'
     'But think of what she was saved from. She would probably have died from some third-world disease or grown up with no education or been sold into sexual slavery if she'd stayed.'
     'Might be better than being a child of divorce. Less therapy later.'
I didn't want to hear it anymore. Affairs, divorce, and therapy--these were the stuff of American families."

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