Michelle Weidenbenner (Photo provided)

Scattered Links wins first place in the Kindle Book Promos 2014 Book contest, is selected as a finalist in the 2014 Readers’ Favorite International Awards, and is a Bronze Medal finalist in Dan Poytner’s Global eBook Awards.

The novel explores RAD, reactive attachment disorder, a complex problem associated with children who are unable to form healthy emotional bonds with other people—often in post-institutionalized children or foster children.

Michelle Weidenbenner’s story captures the daily life of an orphaned girl in post-Soviet Russia and shows the pain of neglect, self-worth issues and detachment experienced by children who have been emotionally or physically abused at an early age.

Weidenbenner was inspired to write this novel after taking a trip to Russia to adopt her daughter. “I’m very pro-adoption, but there are problems that can arise from adopting a post-institutionalized child, foster child or any child, and I wanted to show this problem in my novel.”

RAD isn’t a common theme of adoption books but is a “real” issue many people don’t know exists, says Weidenbenner.

“It’s sad. Some adoptive parents discover that their adoptive children are too difficult to handle and case workers are forced to re-home the children.”

According to MayoClinic.org, RAD is a “disorder that is rare but serious in which an infant or young child doesn’t establish healthy attachments with parents or caregivers.” The illness develops if a child’s basic needs are not met before reaching the age of five. The Mayo Clinic suggests a comprehensive psychiatric assessment and an individualized treatment plan.

Weidenbenner hopes her novel will be an “eye-opener” for people, especially adults seeking to adopt children. “I’m a sucker for emotional stories.”

This is Weidenbenner’s second novel. Her first, Cache a Predator, a Geocaching Mystery, has been an Amazon bestseller and is hidden in geocaching sites as a trackable throughout the US and Canada.

This month, she released the first book in her children’s chapter book series for girls who love horses and humor. Éclair Goes to Stella’s is an early reader about a seven-year-old girl who has to live with her eccentric grandma.

Her books are available at Amazon.