Summary

Chapter three begins with a retelling of Chung’s adoptive parents’ wedding and their relocation to Seattle. The couple becomes increasingly religious, hoping to conceive. Although Chung’s mother was pregnant once, she suffered a devastating miscarriage and the couple quickly realized that having biological children would not be in their future. A year later, Chung was born to a Korean-American family with serious health complications, ten weeks short of full term. Although many people warned Chung’s adoptive parents that they would be financially incapable of affording Chung’s medical treatment, they were committed to adopting the newborn girl. They consequently decided to go with a closed adoption route, believing that a more intimate connection with Chung’s parents would pose far too large a risk for a fragile arrangement in their own relationship with the new child. Chung recounts that her...