The modern practice of “open adoption” means that a young girl can select a couple to adopt her baby by looking at their scrapbook, and she can then stay in all three of their lives. The potential emotional pitfalls of this arrangement are delicately plumbed in Hoboken-based author Caroline Leavitt’s eighth novel, Girls in Trouble (St. Martin’s Press, January, 2004).
Leavitt came to Hoboken in 1992 with her fiancée after looking around Manhattan for apartments. She’d been fixed up with non-fiction writer Jeff Tamarkin (“Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane”) through a friend. After they decided to live together, they knew that they’d need to find a place that had several rooms, because they were both writers who worked at home. Hoboken was an affordable alternative to Manhattan.
Seven years ago, the couple had a son named Max. A medical condition meant that Leavitt probably couldn’t have another child, but when Max was 2 or 3, she thought she might want to adopt.
“Jeff had a cousin who did an open adoption, and it was really successful,” Leavitt said. “But we weren’t able to make a match within a year.”
During the process of searching for a child, Leavitt would get calls from birth mothers who had found her through adoption agencies.
“I had very long conversations with these very young girls,” she said last week, “and the longer I talked to them, the more it seemed like they were interested in having a relationship with me as a person rather than [finding out] whether I was going to be a good mother to their child, which made sense.” Leavitt said she told them how brave they were, while their mothers were often telling them they’d made a mistake. “It was almost as if mothers wanted me to adopt them as well as their babies,” Leavitt said. “I couldn’t get them out of their mind.”
She started thinking about the girls’ heartbreak, and three or four years ago, she began writing “Girls in Trouble.”
In “Girls in Trouble,” the main character is unique for a 16-year-old pregnant girl – she’s an honors student who is not prone to dating. But standing outside of class one day, Sara meets cigarette-smoking Danny, a school outcast with a thirst for reading. They fall in love and sneak around, and when she winds up pregnant, he disappears.
What follows is a trail of secrecy and confusion, until Sara finds a couple – George and Eva – who want to adopt her baby. They also get along quite well with Sara herself.
But will Sara be disappointed after the baby is born and she doesn’t have as much of a place in all three of their lives? Even though Sara loves her baby and still loves Danny, her parents want her to forget it ever happened. The novel proceeds through Sara’s life and decisions and looks at love and regrets.
Author Leavitt said she has gotten more reader response from the novel than any one before.
“It’s getting huge reaction,” she said last week. An appearance on NPR brought calls from birth mothers, and the book itself has earned many positive reviews.
The Washington Post said, “Girls in Trouble … is both a page-turner and also a canny portrait of the trouble perfectly ordinary people can get into while trying to satisfy their perfectly ordinary needs for love and security and happiness.”
A writer’s start
Leavitt grew up outside Boston and graduated from the University of Michigan. While living in Pittsburgh in the early 1980s at the age of 28, she entered a short story contest in Redbook Magazine. An agent contacted her and wanted to represent her in publishing her first novel. The problem was, Leavitt hadn’t written one.
The agent decided to market her short story as the beginning of a novel.
“She sold it in two weeks,” Leavitt said last week. “And I went into a panic because I had no idea how to write a novel.”
But the novel was published, garnering lots of attention for Leavitt, and seven more books followed.
Leavitt is also busy with endeavors including writing a book column for the Boston Globe, and of course, taking care of Max.
She said that Hoboken is a good place for her family.
“I love it because it’s really urban, and has very much a community feel,” she said. “It makes it incredibly easy for someone with a kid. There are a lot of resources. There are a lot of artists and writers here. The neighborhoods are very mixed, [with] people living here for generations and people who’ve just come over. I really like the flavor of it and the character of it.”
So what’s next for Leavitt?
She says she’s gotten “Three quarters of a really messy first draft” of a novel done. Right now, though, she’s doing readings of “Girls in Trouble,” including one scheduled with Sara Nelson (“So Many Books, So Little Time, A Year of Passionate Reading”), for March 9, Tuesday, 6 p.m. at Coliseum Books in midtown Manhattan.
“In two months,” Leavitt said of book 9, “I may pick it up again.”