Losing Jessica

The mother who was forced to give up her adopted daughter in the world-famous Baby Jessica custody battle presents her story, movingly arguing for changes in the adoption system. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Although DeBoer lobbies mightily for children's rights here, her self-interest, expressed with extreme emotionalism, underpins this vexed book and ultimately obscures that larger issue. The author re-creates her custody battle over her adopted daughter, Jessica, who was born out of wedlock to Clara Clausen on February 7, 1991, and returned to her birth parents on August 2, 1993. During the course of the custody hearings, Clara married her daughter's biological father, Dan Schmidt, who had not legally renounced claim to his child; the case was argued in both Iowa, where the Schmidts live, and Michigan, home state of the author and her husband, Jan. DeBoer presents her household as utterly child-centered: in her account, she devoted all of her time to Jessica, and Jan frequently took days off from his job as a printer to be with his child. The Schmidts are shown only to their discredit: Clara initially named her fiance as the father of her child, although she was simultaneously sexually intimate with Dan, a truck driver, who years earlier had abandoned two children he had fathered by two different women. The psychic and financial turmoil caused to the DeBoers and to their families by the custody battle is made so palpable that readers will weep; yet the Schmidts' anguish, which one assumes to have been no less real, is not considered in these pages. DeBoer wants us to see Jessica as victimized by the legal system, which favors biological parents, but thoughtful readers will need a disinterested account of the case before deciding. Photos not seen by PW . 100,000 first printing; first serial to Redbook; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sincere but tedious rehashing of the ``Baby Jessica'' saga by former adoptive mother DeBoer. In the summer of 1993, Baby Jessica, now known as Anna Schmidt, was returned to her biological parents after a two-year court battle that captured worldwide attention. Shortly after relinquishing her baby for adoption, birth mother Cara Schmidt began to mourn deeply. To cope with her pain, according to DeBoer, Cara attended a meeting of Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), whose philosophy is that ``short of kidnapping and murder, this [separation from her baby] is the most horrible, unnatural loss a mother can endure.'' And so Cara Schmidt began her efforts to regain the baby she had hastily and conveniently surrendered. It is DeBoer's contention that had Cara not connected with CUB, Baby Jessica would be living a secure life with her adoptive parents. DeBoer strives for objectivity, but generally fails. Just as Cara and Dan Schmidt appear never see the DeBoers as anything more than temporary caretakers who have made a media circus out of their tragedy, the DeBoers see the Schmidts as mere ``baby machines'' who created a product that they initially abandoned. The result is ugly. Dan Schmidt is portrayed as a violent and negligent father whose court papers show that ``he has previously failed to raise or support his other two children.'' On the other side, DeBoer writes, a handful of criminal dirt committed by her husband, Jan, as a teenager is dug up and slung. While Jan considered fleeing the country with Jessica--a rare revelation here--Robby leapt to the media to publicize her plea that ``the bias of the courts towards biology'' would jeopardize her daughter's well-being. A sometimes absorbing, often superficial memoir that is far less meaty than the New Yorker's treatment of a year ago. (Two eight-page inserts of b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Redbook; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This story-behind-the-story of Robby and Jan DeBoer's battle to keep their adopted daughter will get coverage on the Today show, a 15-city author tour, and a 100,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The long, painful court battle over whether adoptive parents Jan and Robby DeBoer or birth parents Cara Clausen and Dan Schmidt should have custody of Baby Jessica (now Baby Anna) share center stage here with a moving narrative of Jessi's two and a half years with the DeBoers. Clearly, telling this story has been a form of therapy for the author, and it is difficult to disagree with her insistence that the best interest of the child should be a central concern in custody conflicts. The problem is that opinions about what is in the best interest of an adopted child are highly polarized--even politicized--with proponents of traditional and open adoptions almost as dug into their positions as those who shake signs at each other outside abortion clinics. In the adoption controversy, the DeBoers have come to represent the closed-adoption agenda of conservative groups such as the National Council for Adoption, and Robby DeBoer blames open-adoption activists in Concerned United Birthparents for many of her problems. The heavy media exposure the DeBoer-Schmidt case received in 1993 and Doubleday's aggressive promotion plans for Losing Jessica guarantee interest, but DeBoer's affecting testimony should be balanced by the open-adoption story, exemplified in Betty Jean Lifton's Journey of the Adopted Self. Mary Carroll