Fans have been signing up at Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington to purchase the publication when it arrives – literally on a slow boat from China. Cooke recently heard that 3,000 copies of the book had arrived June 23 in New York and are in U.S. Customs. She hopes the books will be available for distribution within two weeks.

Cooke and her husband, Alan Morse, of Phillips, adopted 2-year-old Tong Ting from an orphanage in central China in 1998. The book is a story of love that Cooke tells of their experience. Embedded within the book is a children’s version, illustrated with colored-pencil drawings by University of Maine at Farmington biology student Katherine Schlieper of Topsham. Also included is a Chinese translation, and calligraphy created by a Chinese artist.

Others at UMF were also involved in the publication, including Pu Ming Ming, a professor of linguistics, who helped with the Chinese translation.

Early in the book, Cooke quotes a Chinese proverb: “A child is a blossom that floats into your life for a little while and then continues on its way.”

Cooke said she found the quote while bringing up her two natural children, and said it informed her about parenting.

“My job is not to force my ideals on them but to let them figure out who they are,” she said in a recent interview.

Cooke, 55, an English professor at UMF and the mother of two grown children, decided with her husband that they still had a lot of love to give. So they looked to adoption.

Ting, now almost 8, made the trip back to China with her parents last year to visit her orphanage and find a publisher for the book.

The book will be available at Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers, and on Amazon.com.

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