Ann Hood’s new book, “The Red Thread,” was written five years after the sudden death of her young daughter and is about how different bonds can be established and severed between all the people in our lives. As a premise for the story, she tells about the Chinese belief that an invisible red thread connects each child with all the people – past, present and future- who play a role in his or her life. This is how she begins to weave the stories of the different children and the various adults that factor into their lives.
The plot is about an adoption agency called “The Red Thread” and its owner Maya Lange, who, like the author, had a young child tragically and suddenly die. Maya’s therapeutic way of coping with her grief was to establish an adoption agency that connected children from China in need of parents with American adults in need of children. The stories of the families in China who were forced to abandon their daughters were told, as were the stories of the American couples who were forced to deal with their infertility and other seemingly hopeless feelings. A leap of faith on everyone’s part was what made the process and the relationships work. At the end, when one of the couples got cold feet at the last minute and backed out of the adoption process, Maya was suddenly given the chance to say yes to motherhood again. She had the opportunity to take one of the Chinese babies for her own, and she knew that she, too, was connected by a red thread to a child she was fated to have.
This book club meeting was especially interesting because Jeanie came to talk about the adoption of her son, Zeke, from an orphanage in China. It was so delightful hearing her stories and passing around the photos of her family. The “Gotcha Day” videos on YouTube were really heartwarming and were a great supplement to this book because they offered us a real visual experience to better understand the overseas adoption process. And they made us all cry!
Friday Morning Bookclub 
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