Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

Amazon.com Price: $16.83 (as of 10/10/2019 22:32 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

“A wonderful book, funny unbelievably tender, and smart. It shimmers.”–Anne Lamott

Includes an all-new afterword about Adam.
  
John and Martha Beck had two Harvard degrees apiece when they conceived their second child. Further graduate studies, budding careers, and a growing family meant major stress–not that they’d have admitted it to anyone (or themselves). As the pregnancy progressed, Martha battled constant nausea and dehydration. And when she learned her unborn son had Down syndrome, she battled nearly everyone over her decision to continue the pregnancy. She still cannot give an explanation for many of the things that happened to her whilst she was expecting Adam, but by the time he was born, Martha, as she puts it, “had to unlearn virtually everything Harvard taught [her] about what is precious and what is garbage.”

Expecting Adam is an autobiographical tale of an academically oriented Harvard couple who conceive a baby with Down’s syndrome and come to a decision to carry him to term. Despite everything Martha Beck and her husband John know about themselves and their belief system, when Martha gets by chance pregnant and the fetus is discovered to have Down’s syndrome, the Becks find they cannot even imagine abortion. The presence of the fetus that they each, privately, consider is a familiar being named Adam is too strong. As Martha’s terribly difficult pregnancy progresses, peculiar coincidences and paranormal experiences begin to occur for both Martha and John, though for months they don’t share them with each other. Martha’s pregnancy and Adam (once born) become the catalyst for tremendous life changes for the Becks.

Focusing primarily on the pregnancy but floating from side to side between the present and recent and distant past, Martha Beck’s well-written, down-to-earth, funny, heart-rending, and tender book transcends the cloying tone of much spiritual literature. Beck is trained as a methodical academician. As a result of her step-by-step explanation of her own progress from doubt to belief, she feels like a reliable witness, and even the most skeptical readers may begin to doubt their senses. When she describes an out-of-body experience, we, too, feel ourselves transported to a pungent, noisy hawker center in Singapore. We, too, feel calming, invisible, supporting hands when she falls. Yet, whether or not readers consider in Beck’s experiences is ultimately a moot point. There is not any doubt that Adam–a boy who sees the world as a series of connections between people who love each other–is a tremendous gift to Beck, her family, and all who have the honor of knowing him. –Ericka Lutz

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Biographies and Memoirs » Arts and Literature » Authors » Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

Recent Products