Chosen by Chandra Hoffman
It all begins with a fantasy: the caseworker in her "signing paperwork" charcoal suit, paired with beaming parents cradling their adopted newborn, against a fluorescent-lit delivery room backdrop. It's this blissful picture that keeps Chloe Pinter, director of The Chosen Child's domestic adoption program, happy juggling the high demands of her boss and the incessant needs of parents on both sides.
But the job that offers her refuge from her turbulent personal life and Portland's winter rains soon becomes a battleground itself involving three very different couples: the Novas, well-off college sweethearts who suffered fertility problems but are now expecting their own baby; the McAdoos, a wealthy husband and desperate wife for whom adoption is a last chance; and Jason and Penny, an impoverished couple who have nothing-except the baby everyone wants. When a child goes missing, dreams dissolve into nightmares, and everyone is forced to examine what they really want and where it all went wrong . . .
Told in alternating points of view, "Chosen" reveals the desperate nature of desire across social backgrounds and how far people will go to get the one thing they think will be the answer.