Part 2 of a 3-part series

In my previous post, I discussed my unease that nearly all adoption fiction focuses on one of two themes:

• Birth parents who want their child back.



• Birth parents/children who search and reunite with one another.

Karen Kingsbury’s latest novel is no exception. Currently #1 on the Christian bestseller list, Like Dandelion Dust chronicles several months in the lives of Molly and Jack Campbell, adoptive parents of 4-year-old Joey. The Campbell family leads an idyllic life (almost too idyllic—the super-smart, well-mannered Joey behaves like no 4-year-old I’ve ever met and his parents constantly make googly-eyes at one another. Even worse, this deliriously happy family lives in an upscale neighborhood in beautiful West Palm Beach and owns a ski boat – just your typical adoptive family, right?).

So when the unexpected happens, everything in this beautiful family’s world crumbles. You guessed it: Joey’s birth parents, Wendy and Rip Porter, decide they want him back. After four years.

Unlike the Campbells, Wendy Porter is a lonely, struggling woman from Ohio who has spent the last five years of her life waiting for her physically abusive husband to get out of prison. Unbeknownst to Rip, Wendy has had several affairs while he’s been locked up on a domestic violence conviction. And Wendy harbors one more little secret: right before Rip went to prison, she became pregnant with his child – the son Rip had always dreamed of fathering.

But because Rip’s main thrill in life is getting drunk and beating up his wife, Wendy kept her pregnancy hidden from Rip. When the baby was born, Wendy placed him with adoptive parents from Florida, forging Rip’s signature on the relinquishment papers.

Upon his release from prison, Rip seems like a new man. He’s clean, sober, and anger-free. But Wendy (like any woman who’s been in an abusive relationship) doubts Rip’s reformation. She decides to tell him about the baby immediately, fearing that if he learns about her pregnancy from one of his former drinking buddies, he’ll revert to his past behavior and beat her to a pulp.

So she tells him. And Rip isn’t happy. He decides, right there and then, that he wants his son back. He and Wendy immediately take steps to ensure the return of their son. Since the adoption papers Wendy had signed were forgeries, in the eyes of the law, the adoption never officially took place. Joey, for all intents and purposes, still legally belongs to his birth parents.

Therein lies the conflict.

The Campbells, whose lives are shattered by the news that their precious son will have to go live with some strangers he’s never heard of before, consider making a run for it. They hatch a scheme to leave the country, planning to disappear (like dandelion dust) and to create new identities and new lives far, far from anyone who has the power to take their child from them.

In Part 3...More on the themes in 'Like Dandelion Dust.'