SF Chronicle arts writer and acclaimed memoirist Rachel Howard comes to Sacramento to read from her novel, just out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. When The Risk of Us opens, readers meet a forty-something woman who deeply wants to become a mother. The path that opens up to her and her husband takes them through the foster care system, with the goal of adoption. And when seven-year-old Maresa comes into their lives, their hearts fill with love. But her rages and troubles threaten to crack open their marriage. Over the course of a year, as Maresa approaches the age at which children become nearly impossible to place, the couple must decide if they can be the parents this child needs, and finalize the adoption -- or, almost unthinkably, give her up. The Risk of Us asks the question: How do you get to unconditional love?