Just Out:

An American Family, by Jon and Michael Galluccio. With David Groff. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 cloth, 272 pages.

In 1997, a New Jersey court ruled that Jon and Michael Galluccio, a gay couple, could jointly adopt their foster child, Adam. In this memoir, Jon and Michael take turns remembering the events that led to that historic ruling: making the decision to foster an HIV-positive, drug-addicted baby; getting used to being parents; weaning Adam from drugs and nursing him slowly to health; and contesting the state's claim that only one of them could legally adopt Adam. In the course of the lawsuit, the men also take in a baby girl and her teenage half-sister. Running parallel to Adam's story is the chronicle of Jon's successful search for the birth mother who gave him up for adoption in the early 1960s. Although the use of two voices leads to repetition, this is a moving story about the real meaning of family.

Featured Excerpt:

When I thought of babies, I thought of my nieces and nephews, round little bundles of Italian-American health. This child would not be like that. With all our basic training, did we know enough to care for him? "Would this baby even live?" Had we let our desire to be parents get us in over our heads? They say God does not give us more than we can handle, but right then I had my doubts.

- from "An American Family", by Jon and Michael Galluccio