Nobody's Child by Austin Boyd was sent to me, along with 2 other copies to share, from Zondervan, for review.
First their Synopsis:
For Laura Ann McGehee, her body represents the one remaining financial resource that can save the family farm. For Sophia McQuistion, Laura Ann’s unusual sacrifice fulfills her own dream of having a child. Weaving together bioethics and faith in a heart-rending tale of love lost and loves found, Nobody’s Child dramatizes the ethical question we can no longer ignore in medicine: Just because we can do something … should we?
About Austin Boyd: He is the award-winning author of the thrilling space suspense trio, The Evidence, The Proof and The Return. An inventor, business entrepreneur, spacecraft engineer, and Navy pilot, he weaves real science with true-to-life characters in descriptive page-turning suspense. Austin and his wife, Cindy are the parents of four adult children and live in Huntsville, Alabama where he manages an engineering and design company, and serves the community through Crisis Pregnancy ministries.
My take on Nobody's Child: The book itself was well written and the pages filled with details of farm life in West Virginia along with characters who were believable and endearing. What I think is the crying shame about Nobody's Child is the obvious ignorance regarding egg donation. I probably shouldn't have been surprised as Eggsploitation is one of the references recommended in the back of the book. The segments shared regarding Laura Ann's egg donation and the outcome are particularly hard to swallow because every fear that a donor may have came true in this book. Realizing Nobody's Child is meant to be a dramatization I still felt I was constantly thinking 'what's next'? whenever something went wrong in poor Laura Ann's life. (Most of which stemmed from her egg donation).
Twenty years old and very much ashamed of "selling her eggs" to save the family farm and help with medical bills, Laura Ann has everything go wrong from floods and fires to a recipient of one of her egg donations showing up pregnant on her door step. What else could go wrong? How about premature labor, a will that leaves the baby to Laura and finding out that a nurse from the now debunked clinic also has a daughter from Laura Ann's donation! Nope, that is not a spoiler!
I recommend reading Nobody's Child for entertainment only. There is a lot of misinformation regarding egg donation and the whys and hows of the process. Leering doctors and exaggerated side effects aside, Nobody's Child does have a message of where there's a will there's a way. Everything that was thrown at Laura Ann had a solution that worked for her mainly due to the supporting characters and her own deep seeded strength.
Posted by: Sharon LaMothe~
Founder of LaMothe Surrogacy Consulting
Owner LaMothe Services
