The Girl We Almost Adopted
A Novel of Foster Care and Family

About this book:

Fourteen days. That's all the time Laura and Mark have left before a judge decides whether Maya—the three-year-old who calls them Mama and Daddy, who has known no other home—will stay with them or be returned to the biological mother who has finally gotten sober. After eighteen months of middle-of-the-night terrors, supervised visitations, and quiet triumphs, the system that asked them to love Maya completely now demands they let her go.

As the court date looms, Laura documents every milestone and meltdown, every dinosaur sock and bedtime story, knowing a social worker's recommendation will carry more weight than the depth of their bond. Sarah has done everything the court asked: rehab, employment, stable housing. By every legal measure, she has earned her daughter back. But the law doesn't measure the way Maya reaches for Laura in her sleep, or the sound of Mark's laugh during their morning breakfast ritual.

In the tradition of Jodi Picoult and Lisa Wingate, *The Girl We Almost Adopted* is a heart-wrenching exploration of the foster care system's central contradiction: that the most selfless love is also the most conditional. With a ticking clock and two mothers who would move mountains for the same little girl, this novel asks the question no legal statute can answer—what truly defines a family?