"Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl's Journey Through Adoption"

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. Continue reading →

Read excerpt here
Excerpt

The photo revealed an oblong wooden shack covered with shingles that had lost their white hue and succumbed to rot over the years as a result of torrents of rain pouring down from the metal sheet roof. Everything inside had undoubtedly gotten soaked too. In the dirt yard in front of the building stood an old blue pila tub for washing clothes or bathing oneself, and a trail of water was visible between the cistern and the shack. Off to the left was a jocote tree that produced the sweet fruit common to this part of Central America. Scuffmarks and carvings were visible on the tree’s trunk and in its lower branches. Children must have played here: signs of life. Continue reading →