Grace from China

Fourteen-year-old Jess is only just coming to terms with her father's death in a car accident. Until now she believed her mother put aside the family's plan to adopt a daughter from China. But a year has passed, Xiao Ting is ready to be picked up from her orphanage, and Jess is having second thoughts. Jess is still walled up by grief, but within a matter of weeks she's traveling to China accompanied by her mother, seven other families, and one energetic adoption facilitator. Among her traveling companions is fifteen-year-old Winnie Moore, who was adopted from China thirteen years earlier. Like Jess, Winnie has lost a parent. Yet Jess quickly discovers that Winnie isn't quite like anyone she's ever met before. China, too, holds many surprises. A country with a long, complex history and an uncertain future, this strange land is the birthplace of her new sister, Xiao Ting. Until she gets there, how can Jess possibly begin to imagine that she, too, will come to feel connected to a country thousands of miles from home? How can she predict what the trip and her new sister hold in store for her? How can she understand why the Chinese birth family could not keep their daughter? How can she believe that Emily's words just might come true?


Genre: Children's Fiction