It wasn't until her mother died that successful writer Janis Cooke Newman felt the urge to have a child. When she and her husband, Ken, had difficulty conceiving, they went to a meeting about adoption only vaguely interested in the idea. But from the moment they saw the videotape of a little Russian boy - whose name was the Russian word for snow - they knew he was the one. Their struggle to adopt this little boy with his huge eyes and uncertain smile plunged them into the bureaucratic and often heartbreaking world of international adoption against a backdrop of political tension.
