It is Winter, 2020. In San Francisco, Eric Stover tries to comfort his wife, Heather. They are a 40-something couple unable to conceive. Perhaps a decade earlier Heather had given birth to their daughter, Chloe, despite issues in her pregnancy, but Chloe had lived only for a short few years before her life was claimed by cancer.
And now their doctor is recommending IVF through a surrogate. A few weeks later Eric discusses their plans with his mother, Abby, and his step-father, Brian. They are supportive but, like Eric, wonder about the expense.
So begins a harrowing and desperate journey that will take Eric and Abby (substituting for Heather, felled by Covid at home) to at least five countries, all in an effort to bring their newborn daughter “Out Of Ukraine” ($14.95 in paperback, independently published, emilygallo.com; also for Amazon Kindle).
Abby, a writer, is an anxious sort, worrying about what might go wrong, not only with the surrogate in Ukraine, but how they might surmount the Covid delays and the bureaucracies that speak other languages, as Eric and Abby await receiving little Jillian Irina.
Then, with Jillian in Ukraine, Eric and Abby must wait for her birth certificate to be registered and her passport application to be processed. The word comes that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv is closing and then, on February 24, 2022, Russia invades Ukraine and the trio must flee the country. Eric and Abby are by turns resourceful and deeply afraid for Jillian.
Gallo recounts the many hours walking with Jillian in the freezing cold in an effort to reach the Polish border. “They walked on and the closer they got to the border, the more crowded it got. ‘I wish we could find out what’s going—.’ His sentence was flattened by a huge explosion. People screamed and started running in every direction.”
There is much, much more to come. Readers will find they are turning pages far into the night.
Emily Gallo is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, July 24 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, July 28 at 8:00 p.m.
