Let's Pretend We're Christians and Play in the Snow: The Adventures of a Jewish Dad

Seattle technology entrepreneur and freelance author Ed Harris shares the heartwarming, funny and endearing story of his multiracial, international Jewish family. Ed is from New York, his wife Anne is from Amsterdam and they met in Israel as teenagers. After a series of adventures, including inadvertently sharing an apartment with a prostitute in Tel Aviv who threatened to have them cut into pieces by the Israeli mafia, and then renting a flat from a mobster in Amsterdam, they make their way to New Jersey to pursue their educations and settle down. After getting an MBA, Ed begins his career and they buy a home in a charming small town, Montclair, NJ. There is only one problem: they discover they aren’t getting pregnant, and so at a relatively early age they begin to pursue adoption. Eventually, they find their way to Cuzco, Peru, ancient capital of the Incas, and become a family when a tiny brown baby girl is put into their arms and transforms their lives forever. They manage to flee Cuzco on the eve of a change of government that brings in a new dictator and closes the country to future international adoptions. Eventually, after a move from NJ to Seattle, a biological boy is born the old fashioned way, and third child, a baby boy from Guatemala, is finally added to the mix. A family with an assortment of skin colors, countries of origin, and, it later turns out, alternative sexual orientations, provides endless amusement and holds lessons on family life and parenting. Readers will be both fascinated and richly entertained by this well-told tale of a modern American family that has carved out an identity on its own terms, maintaining traditional values in a rapidly-changing world.