More Love, Less Panic

October 6, 2014
Memoir meets self-help in Knobler’s enjoyable account of life as an adoptive father. Knobler and his wife had two “perfectly good” biological children, ages four and six, when, moved by an article about AIDS orphans in Africa, they decided to adopt. After the couple spent months navigating through government red tape, they took in five-year-old Nati, whose mother was HIV positive. Nati instantly upended stay-at-home dad Knobler’s feeling of being in control of his household. Through this experience, he learned to think more about what was right for his own kids, and less about what American middle-class consumer culture says is best. Knobler’s tone is straightforwardly disarming, as when he reveals that his mother, having spent his “entire life frantically trying to find a nice Jewish girl for me to marry so that I could give her nice Jewish grandchildren,” was now ill at ease about having an Ethiopian grandchild. This wise account has the potential to reach a large parental audience—not just dads, and not just adoptive parents. Agent: Lindsay Edgecomb, Levine Greenberg Rostan Agency.