I’m overjoyed that nearly five years after I wrote this book, Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey Through Adoption will be published by the University of Nebraska Press. A release date is set for April. 1: you can order here.
Here are the University of Nebraska’s words to describe the book:
“In 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 nation’s poorest children. Fourteen-year-old Ellie, abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan, is at the center of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Ellie’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 brothers—unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders.
Following Ellie’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 terms—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.”
… and I was very fortunate for the book to receive recommendations from two esteemed authors — Bostonian-Guatemalan, Francisco Goldman, who penned New York Times Notable The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? and The Long Night of White Chickens …
“Jacob Wheeler brings some desperately needed clarity to the socially complex, morally and legally confusing issue of U.S. adoptions from Guatemala. He has done the legwork, shown commitment and courage, and the reporting in this book is diligent, heartfelt, and thoughtful.”
… and my friend and fellow northern Michigander, Doug Stanton, author of New York Times bestsellers In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers.
“Jacob Wheeler has written a rare masterpiece of heartbreak, discovery, and adventure, in that Between Light and Shadow is a rare work of compassion, clarity, truth-telling, and above all, humanity. This is the human drama writ large: Who am I? What am I? asked by children whose imploring voices Wheeler captures pitch-perfectly. I can’t imagine a more searing and dramatically told account of youth and parenthood. This is a wonderful, emotionally satisfying book, told masterfully.”
