Journalist, women's advocate, and adoption charity director/founder, Xinran provides an incredible insight into the stories and insights into the women and their families in China who give up their daughters.

Intercountry adoption is a personal interest of mine, and I found this book heartbreaking and an eye opener. There are so many reasons why children are abandoned or worse in China. Many people immediately turn to the 'one child policy' as a blanket reason. There are pressures from family to bear a son to take care of the family and worship the ancestors, there are also survival needs, with boys being allocated greater land resources for farming. The choices that they make must be so difficult and devastating, yet they have also become a cultural, way of life/way things are done also.

Xinran was also able to document some personal stories from inside the orphanages in China and provide some answers to some questions that prospecitve and adoptive parents ask all the time. Why are the controls tightened when there are so many children abandoned? What are the conditions like? What are the processes?

Loaded full of information, yet written with compassion and gentleness to the Good Women of China.