Love in the Driest Season

JD and I seem to go to the library a lot.  We are both big readers and always need to have a book on hand.    We also like to sit down and read magazines while we are there.  JD usually grabs Car and Driver while I will thumb-through my guilty pleasure -- People Magazine.  So, I like when the library puts together book displays under different headings. For example, they will have a display of gardening books in spring, or Love/Marriage books during the month of February.  The displays save me time and leg-work. Somebody else has already done the hard work and picked out books for me to look through.  Well, I saw the book Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker on display and after reading what it was about, I just knew I had to have it.  I just finished it and it is an awesome story about love, race and resilience in trying to adopt!  It is a true story about Neely and his wife Vita's journey to adopt a baby they fell in love with when they met her in a Zimbabwean orphanage in the late 90's.  The little girl's name is Chipo (which means 'gift' in one of the languages spoken there) and she was abandoned at birth in a field, brought to the orphanage by villagers who found her, and proceeded to slowly die there until Neely and his wife nursed her back to health in their home in Zimbabwe.  Neely is white and Vita is black -- both Americans, living abroad in Zimbabwe, and trying desperately to convince the authorities to let them adopt her.  It was an amazing story, and I feel that it was not by chance that I saw this book. I don't know why I needed to read it, but it got me so excited about our possibilities and opportunities that await us!