While the turbulent journey into womanhood has been a topic of such thoughtful and hugely popular books as Reviving Ophelia, SchoolGirls, and Girlfriends, the equally difficult journey into manhood has not received similar attention. In the Country of Men, Jan Waldron's second beautiful memoir, is a paean to boyhood and an expose of the myths of manhood.

This book grew out of a piece Waldron wrote for The New York Times Magazine about her teenage sons and their journeys into manhood. It was received with such enthusiasm, and she had so much more to say about the subject, that she decided to...

Giving Away Simone is Jan Waldron's account of her compelling, turbulent, and maddeningly original relationship with the daughter she gave away. Jan's baby, Simone, was the fifth generation of women in her family to be abandoned by their mothers. Determined to fight this "undertow of conditioned exiting, an affliction of easy farewell," Jan reunited with her daughter, now renamed Rebecca, when Rebecca was eleven. They spent the next thirteen years trying to come to terms with each other and figure out what kind of roles they were to play in each others' lives.
For birthmothers,...