Novel explores adopting a foster child

WITH BREATHTAKING brevity, Rachel Howard’s debut novel, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) illuminates the joys, challenges, fears, and frustrations of adopting a foster child. And while she delves into the minutiae of “the system” and the differences of opinion about parenting styles, her deceptively thin volume is about much more than plunging into parenthood.

Howard masterfully illuminates how parenthood manages to bend even the most solid of marriages and exposes insecurities about past relationships, including those from childhood.

In the unnamed narrator and her husband, Sebastian, choose sevenyear-old, Maresa, “a brown-haired gremlin with arms flung like she could fly off the page” from a binder labelled “Children Available.” They spend the next year learning about Maresa, themselves, and each other as well as the clearly dysfunctional foster-care system in California.

Howard’s first book was a memoir, which isn’t surprising given that the pages of her novel brim with emotion and vulnerability. She and her husband also are the adoptive parents of a former foster child.

Howard’s writing has a unique rhythm that feels choppy, even disjointed at first, but as the reader adjusts, her phrasing and word choices make each page sing. Not a single word is wasted here. There’s no bloat. Her writing is spare and elegant, yet it beautifully conveys intensity and emotional depth.

The only misstep comes near the end of the novel after what’s called “the day of the policeman” and the parents reconsider adopting Maresa.

But it’s a small lapse in a simply gorgeous novel.