Childless in her early forties, time was running out for Arnelle Kendall to have the baby she desperately wanted. Her work as a public relations executive required that she travel internationally much of the year, leaving little time for romance. In this memoir, Arnelle describes the long and often painful path to her daughter's birth-a path she says that was strewn with more obstacles than a mountain road after an avalanche.

<i>A Tale of Two Continents</i> describes the many hurdles that Arnelle overcame to be a mother. A health scare added urgency to her wish and narrowed the timetable, and a life-threatening illness from twenty years earlier made pregnancy hazardous. Defying the danger, she decided to have a baby through in vitro fertilization. What followed was a heroic, painful, and numbingly discouraging ordeal that involved a series of trips from her home in South Florida to her native Johannesburg, South Africa, to become impregnated.

Tragedy struck along the way, but Arnelle finally prevailed; she is now the mother of a bright, little girl. A story of perseverance, <i>A Tale of Two Continents</i> shows the extraordinary efforts of one woman's quest to have a child.