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

The average rating for Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-04-17 00:00:00 Beverly Tenenholz This book was recommended to me as a wonderful read, filled with spiritual strength. Unfortunately, I had a very different experience with it. It greatly disturbs me that so many women have been duped by this book. It's a memoir of Martha Beck's spiritual struggle as she gives birth to a son with Down Syndrome. In reality, it's the story of a woman's fall from truth and grace. She repeatedly rejected the hand of the Lord reaching out to her during her time of need. After I read the book, I researched Beck and saw how her choices had negatively impacted her life. The choices Beck made later in her life reinforced my feelings about this book. Beck is a gifted writer. This book is extremely well written. Each time I put it down due to my uncomfortable feelings, I felt compelled to pick it up again and continue reading it. As I continued, I felt the Lord's Spirit withdraw from me. When I finished, I had to confess my disillusionment to those who recommended it to me. Through Beck's mastery of the written language, she fools many of her readers. There are very few books that I would characterize as dangerous. This is one of them.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-16 00:00:00 William Cushman Memoirs are tough. They lie in that fuzzy grey area somewhere between truth and fiction, and are, by definition, the subjective experiences of someone you may or may not like. This book is, shall we say, less grey than most--I would actually call it a novel. I had nothing else to read, the library was closed, and I thought this book would be an interesting insight into another family with Down syndrome. The book was entertaining--albeit more for the the author's fantastic experiences and her almost comical, extreme disdain for Harvard--but hardly a great read. I should have known that I was in trouble when the author purports to have felt the night she and her husband conceived their son that she was "consciously making" herself pregnant, and then two pages later, insists she had no idea her nausea was an indication of pregnancy. A subsequent Google search revealed the author's previous book--Breaking the Cycle--was coauthored with her husband and concerns fighting the "addiction" of homosexuality. Further Google research claims the author and her husband both came out of the closet in 2003. Am I alone in thinking this lowers the author's credibility a bit? Here's the real issue: the book's message, that children with disabilities should be appreciated beyond their intellectual greatness, is one I'd like to get behind in a big way. But the author, in describing the multiple paranormal experiences that took place during her pregnancy (including many voices telling her not to abort the child), makes other parents of children with disabilities wonder: where were my voices? Why couldn't Martha Beck tell us the story of her love for her son and how it flew in the face of her family and community WITHOUT falling back on angelic messengers to take the responsibility?