"The Mothers" by Jennifer Gilmore / Friday, May 10, 2013 / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

It is amazing how, when one can’t have children, that one sees children and pregnant women everywhere, hears women getting pregnant who didn’t want to be, hears innocent remarks made by family members that makes the person not able to have a child feel nothing less than a failure for the most basic biological act.

“The Mothers” by author Jennifer Gilmore is an emotional, unfair, and aching look at pain of the most basic kind: a woman wants to have a baby and can’t.

After years of trying on their own, Jesse and Ramon decide to try adoption.  Haven’t we all heard of babies who are waiting for a good home?  What they find is not a happy, fast resolution.  Instead, it is a warped view of insensitivity and people involved for all the wrong reasons: scams, bureaucratic idiocy, cruel thoughtlessness even from those whom one would expect to be supportive.  And all because they simply wanted to have a child.

The characters in this book live through hell.  In adoption, you think of children wondering if someone will want them.  In this setting – same situation, but different perspective – you find parents-to-be wondering if birth parents will want them.  It makes you want to throw up your hands and yell, “What is everyone thinking?  Isn’t this supposed to be about the child?”  This book is at odds with those who say there are too many babies and not enough adoptive homes.  From people I know who have tried to go through the adoption process, I’d have to agree with the perspective and agony of Jennifer Gilmore (who has based this novel loosely on her own personal experience of fighting to become a parent).

At times, this book is painful to read, but even more painful – I am sure – to live.  For many, this is not fiction, but the new 21st Century way to start a family.  Needless to say, this story pulls out the emotion in the reader.

To give a child a home should not be this difficult.  But it is.  The only way to know it is to live through it, or read a book like this.  These people are your neighbors and – though you may not know it – even someone in your family.  For those who want emotion in their novels, you can’t get more basic than this.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who have successfully navigated the journey.  Have a great weekend!

– Clay Stafford is an author / filmmaker and founder of Killer Nashville. Stafford’s latest projects are the documentary “One of the Miracles” and the music CD “XO”.

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