Lily Was the Valley

Difficulty unlooked for. Loss unforeseen. Hope forever.

They'd never heard about the darker sides of adoption. Never counted on illness. Or loss. As for Dann, his head had always ruled his heart. Now Lily was dying, and he was about to find out just how little he knew about love.

Dann Robert Johnson's humor and acute honesty hurtle the reader through a memoir that reads like fiction but shines with hope for the times real life deals us its worst. It's for adoptive families. It's for those who have lived cross-culturally. But more than anything it may be a story for adoptees who wonder if someone could have loved them before they came home. It's the story of a flawless Lily in the darkest valley.

"This gut-wrenching struggle through the mysterious strains of deepest love arrested me. It's no fairy-tale version of a princess in a castle." Dr. Ken Castor, adoptive father, 2002, and contributing editor for the Jesus Centered Bible.

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I live in China (and have since 2003: Chongqing, Beijing, Xi'an, Xining) with my wife of twenty years and our burgeoning number of kids. I speak fluent (whatever that means) Mandarin and precious little Norwegian, Spanish, Thai, or French anymore because of it. I enjoy relaxing, reading, cooking (sometimes), journaling, pondering, and (over?)-analyzing, and I deeply miss golf, owning a motorcycle, and long road trips. I wildly prefer editing to creating, have been known to floor my children with my coloring skills (yes, crayons), and hope I get the chance to visit twenty more countries. I like mountains, shorelines, forests, and thunderheads, and can't seem to get enough blue sky, clean air, or stargazing. I get my kicks from witty humor, learning, and overusing parentheses. I love my family, my wife the most, and Jesus more. I have worked as a behavioral-disorder school TA and a YMCA after-school program head teacher in Chicago; as an ESL teacher in Taipei; as a middle/high school English/math teacher, real estate investor, and youth director in Texas; as a grad student in New York; and as a technical consultant, accountant, and general manager of a coffee shop and language center in China. I enjoyed it all, in a passionless sort of way, as it wasn't half the glamorous life it may sound like. I am currently toiling under the weight of a doctoral-program impasse resulting from an inflexible, underage advisor unlikely to grant the Candy Landoctorate that has already more than been earned. I have spoken publicly wherever I've gone, but then, really doesn't everyone? For years I hoped to eventually stumble on what I was born to do, and then I wrote my first book. It was the most fun I've ever had.