"What chance has this kid had to develop? I believe in the positive impact of environment, and with me he'll catch up." Chapter 1, p. 10.

"We watched each other, those strangers and I, like the finalists in a bad news lottery, each willing the other to win. Statistically, some of us would escape this night with our child and our lives intact, but not all." Chapter 2, p. 26.

"For years I assumed I was fighting the effects of his medication, battering the barriers of his late start, scaling self-protective walls erected against the neglect he experienced as an infant. It was not until the following summer, when Adam was still five years old, that I began to have an inkling that my real adversary was the lingering ghost of Adam's biological mother already dead in 1973 of acute alcohol poisoning." Chapter 3, p. 45.

"I was so busy being right, however, that I...