Lisa Grunwald took a photo of a real baby and a real idea - that orphans were used as practice babies in college home economics classes - and took off from this premise to see what the effect on these babies might be. The baby in this story is Henry House, orphan, who comes to a university home economics class during WW II as an infant. The story follows Henry as he is cared for by college students, loved and "adopted" by Martha, the professor teaching the course. Martha teaches that a baby must have rules, and that you can't just pick up the baby when it cries; Martha is horrified at Dr. Benjamin Spock's permissiveness.

Henry's life is a struggle to figure out how to love. He has many adventures (ala Forrest Gump), meeting famous people and living in the middle of the events of the era. The story reminded me a little of the style of John Irving (Cider House Rules, World According to Garp).
The story was interesting, and I finished it quickly because I wanted to see what happened next to Henry.
I guess the point of the book was how Henry never really was loved the way a child should be - he was loved either too much or not enough - so this distorted his view of love. At one point, the famous experiments with monkey babies was mentioned (the experiments where the babies were not allowed to be held and how they didn't thrive).
The ending was disappointing - you can decide for yourself whether it ends the way you want it to. The book would be a good airplane book or beach read.