In moving and refreshingly candid prose, Rescuing Julia Twice tells Traster’s foreign-adoption story, from dealing with the bleak landscape and inscrutable adoption handlers in Siberia, to her feelings of inexperience and ambivalence at being a new mother in her early forties, to her grow­ing realization over months then years that something was “not quite right” with her daughter, Julia, who remained cold and emo­tionally detached. Why wouldn’t she look her parents in the eye or accept their embraces? Why didn’t she cry when she got hurt? Why didn’t she make friends at school? Traster de­scribes how uncertainty turned to despair as she blamed herself and her mothering skills for her daughter’s troublesome behavioral is­sues, until she came to understand that Julia suffered from reactive attachment disorder, a serious condition associated with infants and young children who have been neglect­ed, abused, or orphaned in infancy.

Hoping to help lift the veil of secrecy and shame that too often surrounds parents struggling with attachment issues, Traster describes how with work, commitment, and acceptance, she and her husband have been able to close the gulf between them and their daughter to form a loving bond, and concludes by providing practical advice, strategies, and resources for parents and caregivers.

Tina Traster is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in scores of newspapers, magazines, and literary journals including the New York Times, New York Post, Time Out New York, the Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Family Circle, Parade, Audubon, and many more.

Melissa Fay Greene is the award-winning author of five books of nonfiction, including There Is No Me Without You, about the HIV/AIDS African orphan crisis, and No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, about raising her family. She and her husband are the parents of nine children: four by birth and five by adoption.