Nearing forty, Julia Sweeney realized that something had to give—like now, please. Raised seriously Catholic, she had always believed that God (or a deceased nun who recalled her fondly) would see how hard she’d been trying and come through with the picket-fence thing—a husband and a truckload of kids that she could instill with her family’s neuroses. Yet perhaps, Sweeney thought, she had offended God. (Not to mention the nuns.) She was a successful actress and TV writer (Sex and the City), but suddenly she was only playing mothers—a role she never got in real life. And dating-wise, she’d been out there slugging, but love had never knocked, and suddenly she felt scared, sad, alone, and, well . . . older.

After a few couch-bound months, seeking comfort from her new friends on the Food Channel, she knew she was facing some sort of serious personal crisis. So she got off the couch. And she went back to church—only to realize that maybe God wasn’t going to throw down the picket fence. And maybe—could she even say it?—there was no God taking note of her good deeds and watching out for her. Maybe she was going to have to rethink things, and get a new dream that didn’t look at all like what she’d been raised to expect.

That is only the beginning of the story of how Julia Sweeney found a home (no fence, no prince, no God) with a child she traveled across the world to meet.