Jacob Wheeler visits South High

Jacob Wheeler Visits South High

In honor of "I Love to Read" month, South High invited several local authors in to speak about their books.  The third author to share his story and book is author Jacob Wheeler.  He visited South High School on Tuesday, February 23th to talk to Geography and History classes about Guatemala and International Adoption. 

Jacob spoke to a crowded auditorium in the morning and then spent the rest of the day in the media center talking with staff at lunch and then working with individual classes.  He read from his book, Between Light and Shadow and answered lots of questions.  Several students expressed interest in reading his book about Guatemalan adoption.  Many students throughout the day had shared their personal stories around adoption.  One girl spoke out as an adoptee from Guatemala and another young man told his story of being adopted at age 10 in Minnesota.  They were very powerful stories.

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist for The Uptake.org, a local online press, as well as author of Between Light and Shadow.  He plans to write another book. 

All in all it was a great day.  Thanks Jacob!

Between Light and Shadow Contest Winner!

Between Light and Shadow Contest Winner!!

I am happy to announce the winner of a personalized and signed copy of Between Light and Shadow from Jacob Wheeler, January's Minnesota author in the spotlight.

Congratulations Steph from Stephthebookworm!


If you didn't win you can still order a copy of Jacob's book from Amazon. 
This is such a great story.

Check out Jacob's website at www.betweenlightandshadow.com

January-Author in the Spotlight Wrap-up and Giveaway

January-Author in the Spotlight Wrap-up and Giveaway

Between Light and Shadow Giveaway Ends tonight at Midnight!

Guess What?  It is the end of January already.  Can you believe it?   So it is time for me to wrap-up the special month of January with a treat by highlighting Minnesota author Jacob Wheeler.  Jacob is currently in the Middle East and plans to run across Palestine to raise awareness to issues in the area.

Today is the last day to enter the contest to win a copy of Between Light and Shadow.  The contest ends at midnight tonight.  The contest is open to people living in the U.S. and Canada that are current Booksnob followers.  Good Luck and as always thanks for following Booksnob!



Click here to enter:  Between Light and Shadow Contest

Please check out my review of Between Light and Shadow.  This book is entertaining and timely as it details international adoption and the personal story of a special teenage girl named Ellie.  Ellie is loved by two families from two different countries, Guatemala and the United States, and she touches the heart of all who read this book.  I highly recommend this non-fiction book, it is an intriguing story and educational too.

Between Light and Shadow Book Review

I was lucky to be able to interview Jacob.  He is one busy man.  He is a journalist for The Uptake, and is busy covering important events while getting ready for his life changing trip to Palestine.  Read his interview to learn more about Ellie who is the focus of the book and the world wide issue of international adoption.  So interesting!

Jacob Wheeler Author Interview

Jacob's guest post details the back story behind his book, Between Light and Shadow.  He talks about his experience in Guatemala and so much more. 

Jacob Wheeler Guest Post

As January comes to a close I would like to thank Jacob for being the January Minnesota Author in the Spotlight here on Booksnob.  He is a talented writer and I look forward to reading more interesting titles from him and working with him in the near future.  Please visit Jacob's website at http://betweenlightandshadow.com/ and support him by reading his book, Between Light and Shadow. 

Between Light and Shadow by Jacob Wheeler

Between Light and Shadow.  A Guatemalan Girl's Journey through Adoption by Jacob Wheeler

Between Light and Shadow is a poignant journey through Guatemala's landscape, international adoption and the effect adoption has had on its people.  The focus of the story is a beautiful 14 year old girl named Ellie who was adopted by a family from Michigan when she was seven.

Wheeler is a journalist who follows 14 year old Ellie and her family as they make the decision to reunite with Ellie's birth mother and her siblings in Guatemala.  Ellie was given up by her mother, Antonia, when she was seven years old and she has vivid memories of love and loss.  The last time she saw her brothers, they were chasing after the car she was riding in, Ellie turned to wave goodbye, tears steaming down her cheeks, not knowing if she would ever see them again.

Her adoptive parents, Judy and Bob, make a daring decision, against everyone's advice, to try and find Ellie's family. Wheeler is there to support, guide and record the process.  Wheeler is a veteran journalist who speaks fluent Spanish and lived in Guatemala for several years.  His book Between Light and Shadow evolved from a journalistic look into international adoption to a very personal story between two families, one American and one Guatemalan, who share the love on one very special girl.

Currently, adoption in Guatemala is no longer possible.  Wheeler takes a deep look at the Guatemalan adoption economy and explores all the possible aspects of a system that had good intentions and made a lot of U.S. families complete.  He delves into Guatemalan's violent and racist past to discover that extreme poverty has manipulated the adoption process.  We have all heard the horror stories of babies being sold and stolen and Wheeler investigates these claims and more. 

Ellie's personal story intrigued me.  I felt myself caught up in the story between Guatemala and the United States and between two sets of parents.  I know several people who have been adopted and several sets of parents who have adopted from the countries of Guatemala, China, Korea and Russia.  This is a story that everyone can relate to and enjoy.  You will laugh and cry and cherish the moments of Between Light and Shadow.

Jacob Wheeler Guest Post + Giveaway

Jacob Wheeler Guest Post + Giveaway

Jacob Wheeler is Booksnob's Minnesota Author in the Spotlight for January.  His guest post reveals some of the background and inspiration for writing his book Between Light and Shadow. 

Guest Post.

In 2005, while improving my Spanish at a language school in Quetzaltenango, in Guatemala’s western highlands, I found myself falling head over heels in love with that country, its mountains and lakes, its people, their languages and indigenous cultures. The writer, and activist, in me felt drawn in too by Guatemala’s narrative — that of a tragic and bloody modern history, and complicated relationship with my home, the United States.
I wanted to contribute to that story. As I was working toward a Master’s degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing through Goucher College in Baltimore, I wanted to write about Guatemala in the context of its relationship with El Norte. I thought seriously about documenting overland immigration stories — the daring and painful journeys across Mexico to sneak into the United States to work illegally. But that story was already being told.
It so happened that by the middle of last decade, international adoption from Guatemala had exploded. More than 4,000 children per year were heading to baby cribs in America — 1 percent of all children born in Guatemala in 2007 — and, as I write in my book Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey through Adoption, which the University of Nebraska Press published on April 1, nearly every flight leaving Guatemala City for the United States carried a joyous family with their new adoptee in tow.
Why Guatemala, and not China, Korea or former Soviet countries? Guatemala’s “notary” adoption system was unique, in that it was largely privatized, free of governmental bureaucracy, and facilitated by attorneys in the capital who took steps to ease the adoption process for American parents. The infusion of cash in the system meant shorter waits, and better care during the interim. In short, Guatemala’s adoption system was faster, more efficient, and more tailor-made than anywhere else to the needs and desires of American families.
But that process also birthed allegations of baby buying, coercion of birth mothers, even baby theft. UNICEF, some nonprofits in Guatemala, and certain players within the Guatemalan aristocracy, dragged the issue out of the crib and into the international spotlight. Before it ground to a halt in 2008, foreign adoption became one of the most heated topics of debate within that country, and one that prompted a strong opinion from just about everyone.
All this dizzying political drama, and my desire to write a book that captured people’s lives in both the United States and Guatemala — two threads woven together into one colorful huipil, or traditional Mayan dress — birthed Between Light and Shadow.
When I set out to write a book on “the journey” of Guatemalan adoption, I hoped to tell the story from both ends. I wanted to capture the words of the poor, desperate birth mother who relinquishes her child, as well as those of the American family that embraces that same boy or girl and welcomes him or her into their home, opening up a whole new world of opportunity: airplane trips, iPods, high school proms, even a college education — unfathomable to anyone wandering the dirt paths of an impoverished Guatemalan village — but also identity crises, anger and longing for their roots. In the spirit of the great odyssey, I also wanted to retell the events, both tragic and beautiful in their own right, of how these children lose a mother, a family, a home, everything they have known, and then how the doors of fortune miraculously open the day the child is whisked off to the United States.
Little did I know when I began canvassing Midwestern families who had adopted from Guatemala that I would get to accompany a teenage girl and her adoptive mother on a cataclysmic reunion in February 2006 with the woman who had relinquished her as a mature seven year old. Ellie’s return to Guatemala, equal parts beautiful and tragic, and the way she intimately bonded with her biological brothers — despite language, cultural and national barriers — taught me so much about the unbreakable bond of family.
Writing the chapter about her reunion seemed almost too weighty an undertaking, and yet I felt that Ellie’s joyous experience in lavish Antigua and humbling episode in Guatemala’s desolate southern coast could offer so much to the adoption community, and to literature about international adoption.
What do I hope that adoptees, birth families and adoptive parents take away from this book? Each of you will relate to elements of this story in your own separate way. But what I learned was that this particular adoptee, an interloper between two distinct worlds — past and present, poor and rich, familial and acquired — has something to teach us all about our own humanity.

To enter to win a copy of Between Light and Shadow click the link:  Between Light and Shadow contest

Jacob Wheeler

• Editor/Videographer,

TheUpTake.org

• Glen Arbor Sun, founding editor & publisher, www.GlenArbor.com

• Author, "Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl's Journey through Adoption" 

(www.betweenlightandshadow.com)

Thanks Jacob!

Between Light and Shadow Contest

Contest:  Between Light and Shadow. A Guatemalan Girl's Journey Through Adoption by Jacob Wheeler

January's Hometown Track, Minnesota Author in the Spotlight, Jacob Wheeler is giving away one copy of his nonfiction book to a Booksnob follower who lives in the United States or Canada.

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:
“An adoption professional once told me, ‘At its best, there is no adoption system as good as Guatemala’s. At its worst, there is none worse.’”—from the foreword by Kevin Kreutner

In Between Light and Shadow veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry, which has exploited, embraced, and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the Central American nation’s poorest children. Fourteen-year-old Ellie, abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan, is at the center of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Ellie’s abandonment, her adoption and Americanization, her search for her birth mother, and her joyous and haunting return to Guatemala, where she finds her teenage brothers—unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders.

Between Light and Shadow Contest Rules:
Fill out the form
Leave a comment
Must be a Booksnob follower
U.S./Canada only (publisher rules)
Contest Ends 1/31 at midnight.
Good Luck!!!
 

January-Hometown Track Author in the Spotlight

January-Hometown Track Author in the Spotlight

Happy New Year!!
Happy January!

This month I am featuring a very interesting author, whom I met at the Minnesota Book Fair.  His name is Jacob Wheeler and he wrote an investigative, special interest book on the adoption process in Guatemala.  Do you know anyone who has adopted kids from Guatemala??  I do and I think this book will prove to be valuable for anyone interested in international adoption and world wide issues.

Jacob's book is:  Between Light and Shadow.  A Guatemalan Girl's Journey Through Adoption.
Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:

“An adoption professional once told me, ‘At its best, there is no adoption system as good as Guatemala’s. At its worst, there is none worse.’”—from the foreword by Kevin Kreutner

In Between Light and Shadow veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry, which has exploited, embraced, and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the
...more“An adoption professional once told me, ‘At its best, there is no adoption system as good as Guatemala’s. At its worst, there is none worse.’”—from the foreword by Kevin Kreutner

In Between Light and Shadow veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry, which has exploited, embraced, and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the Central American nation’s poorest children. Fourteen-year-old Ellie, abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan, is at the center of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Ellie’s abandonment, her adoption and Americanization, her search for her birth mother, and her joyous and haunting return to Guatemala, where she finds her teenage brothers—unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders. 

In January you can expect a book review of Between Light and Shadow, an author interview, a guest post and a contest.

I hope you have a great start to the New Year.
Looking forward to reading Great books this year!