The Washington Post on Rick and Karen Santorum’s important new book, Bella’s Gift. I look forward to buying and reading it. It seems to be an amazing thing for a presidential candidate to do, to tell the unvarnished truth about the reality of coming to love Bella, his youngest daughter born with an extra 18th chromosome:

The Santorums have written a raw and revealing book, “Bella’s Gift,” to be released on Tuesday. The couple say it was intended as a guide for other families in their situation, providing the type of support that they often found lacking.
“By accident, it’s almost a marriage book,” Karen added. “We didn’t sugarcoat anything. We just said it the way it was.” . . . There was the time that Rick and his teen daughter, Elizabeth, were putting together a crib for newborn Bella. Rick told Elizabeth to save the box, in case they needed it to send the bed back to the store, because ‘we just don’t know how long Bella is going to be here.’”

His wife stared at him and his eldest Lizzy grabbed the box and tore it up.

Honest, raw, painful, amazing.