This memoir reads like a mystery novel. Like thousands of childless American couples, Alex and Jane decide to adopt. They file an application, get approved, and travel to Cambodia to meet their new baby. They adopt little Ivy, and fly home as a family. Fifteen months later, they learn that the orphanage director who handed Ivy to them has been arrested--for trafficking children. Concerned, Alex begins to dig. Another trip around the world leads nowhere, and leaves open the possibility that Ivy wasn't really an orphan who ...
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This memoir reads like a mystery novel. Like thousands of childless American couples, Alex and Jane decide to adopt. They file an application, get approved, and travel to Cambodia to meet their new baby. They adopt little Ivy, and fly home as a family. Fifteen months later, they learn that the orphanage director who handed Ivy to them has been arrested--for trafficking children. Concerned, Alex begins to dig. Another trip around the world leads nowhere, and leaves open the possibility that Ivy wasn't really an orphan who needed a family. On their family's third journey to ask about Ivy's history, they finally find some answers. But this true story raises more questions than it resolves, about one family and about adoption as we know it. 'Third Time Charmed' will keep you riveted as one typical American family's international adoption unfolds, in surprising directions. From a seedy office in Phnom Penh to a Congressional office, it's a page-turner. As the governments of Cambodia and the US meet to discuss opening adoption from Cambodia to American families--after a 10-year shutdown following corruption charges against a US citizen--this story is both timely and troubling.
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