Told from a journalist’s perspective, Love in the Driest Season is an understated, gut-wrenching memoir of Neely and Vita Tucker’s quest to foster and adopt a Zimbabwean child.

The story opens in 1997 Zimbabwe, where Neely Tucker is stationed as a foreign correspondent for the Detroit Free Press. His memoir offers a riveting inside look into the AIDS crisis that ravages Africa, the political and economic conditions of several African countries, and most poignantly, orphanage life in Zimbabwe.

When the childless Neely and Vita express an interest in adopting a Zimbabwean child, they’re told in no uncertain terms, “You can’t adopt. The law does not allow adoptions by foreign nationals.”

Cultural mores, as well, dictate that it’s unnatural for Americans to adopt Zimbabwean children, and particularly unnatural for whites to adopt black children. Neely (a white American) and Vita (a black American) are informed that their chances of adopting a Zimbabwean child are slim to none. Instead, they’re advised to become foster parents or to volunteer in orphanages.

Neely and Vita agree to do both, but wonder why the law on foreign adoptions is so restrictive, particularly in light of the vast number of orphans.

Neely relates the facts about one particular state-run orphanage he and Vita visit—Chinyardzo:

The orphanage appeared modern and clean, for Mesikano and her staff worked hard. But there was only so much to be done with three dimes a day per child. Flies settled on the children, food, and dishes. The in-house clinic had shut down for lack of medicine. Diapers were old washcloths folded into triangles. Food was cornmeal mush and lumpy porridge. Most of the fifteen to twenty infants in the ward at any one time had chronic diarrhea. Because many of the workers had little training in hygiene or lacked the proper sanitary materials, diapers were not properly disinfected before being put on another infant, allowing bacteria and disease to slink from child to child.

As Neely and Vita visit orphanage after orphanage, their hearts are wrenched by the many children who beg the couple to take them home.

“I feel like I just kicked six kids off a lifeboat from the Titanic,” comments Neely, as they leave one orphanage.

“And held them underwater for a while,” Vita adds.

At Chinyardzo, Neely and Vita meet Chipo, a tiny, non-responsive, grossly malnourished 3-month-old with respiratory problems who’d been abandoned in a field the day she was born. As Neely closes his fingers over the child’s fingers, the professionally-detached journalist suddenly discovers that Chipo has stolen his heart.

Vita and Neely learn that 16 infants from Chinyardzo have died that year, and they suspect that the sickly Chipo will not live unless they do something. They volunteer to take Chipo home for the weekend, and thus begins a grueling process. Not only do Neely and Vita fight to keep Chipo alive, they fight to gain custody as foster parents. Both battles are grueling, to the last page of the book.

If you or someone you know is considering adopting a child from an African country or from any third world country, Love in the Driest Season is a must-read. In journalistic fashion, Neely tells it like it is when he reports the horrific conditions of the orphanages and relates their struggle to navigate Zimbabwe’s chaotic foster parenting and adoption system. But he also writes with the eloquence of a man who’s been smitten by an orphan and will go to great lengths to assure that the child he loves doesn’t become a victim of The System.

Don’t just read this book; inhale it. As you allow the words to settle deep within your spirit, you will learn. And you will be moved.

For more about the author, visit www.neelytucker.com