"Centering on the story of Ben Barnz and his husband adopting a child. We alternates between legal suspense story and memoir, examining shifting gender roles in parenting and modern notions of family-construction. The book interweaves Barnz's path to parenthood beginning with his closted youth in the 1980's New York, a time when it was statistically more likely he would die from AIDS than become a father. We delves into the complicated relationships that arise between birthparents and adoptive parents, between birthmothers and birthfathers, between parent and child, between married couples. In this story, as in life, empathy is revealed where, technically, non should exist; this book examines our desire to do better, be better--better people, better friends, better parents, better strangers, better ourselves. And in the end, We celebrates the potential we all have for forgiveness,"--page [4] of cover.