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Counting Down
- A Memoir of Foster Parenting and Beyond
- Narrated by: Kristi Burns
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
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Counting Down
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Publisher's summary
When Deborah Gold and her husband signed up to foster parent in their rural mountain community, they did not foresee that it would lead to a roller-coaster 15 years of involvement with the traumatized, yet resilient, birth family. They fell in love with Michael (a toddler when he came to them), yet they had to reckon with the knowledge that he could leave their lives at any time.
In Counting Down, Gold artfully tells her story of forging a family within an often confounding system in ways that defied the expectations of everyone involved. The remarkable characters we meet include social workers, a birth mother with the courage to give her children the childhood she never had herself, and a father parenting from prison. We also encounter members of a remarkable fellowship of Appalachian foster parents - gay, straight, right, left, evangelical, and atheist - united by love, loss, and quality hand-me-downs.
Unlike child welfare manuals and textbooks, Gold’s memoir brings us a foster parent’s perspective (and, through Michael’s own poetry and essays, that of a former foster child). The book shakes up common assumptions and offers a hopeful look at an experience usually portrayed as bleak. For those who have fostered, Counting Down will be validating and familiar; for everyone else, it will inspire.
“A deeply moving memoir about both the rewards and the daunting challenges of being a foster family...a unique and valuable book. Bravo.” (Ron Rash, author of The Risen)
“An extraordinary story of loss and recovery that documents the breakdown and rebuilding of lives, family, and human potential. Deborah Gold is a gifted writer....” (Robert Morgan, author of Chasing the North Star)
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Solid Book
- By Daryl on 11-06-16
By: C. Nicole Mason
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After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
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In the Country We Love
- My Family Divided
- By: Diane Guerrero, Michelle Burford
- Narrated by: Diane Guerrero
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,279
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,997
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,986
Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Moves very slowly
- By Laura S. on 07-23-16
By: Diane Guerrero, and others
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Everything You Ever Wanted
- A Memoir
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Jillian Lauren
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story5 out of 5 stars 58
In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei's harem, an experience she immortalized in her best-selling memoir, Some Girls. In her 30s, Jillian's most radical act is learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great for adoptive families
- By berry bomb on 07-06-22
By: Jillian Lauren
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 356
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 324
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Story4 out of 5 stars 323
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
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An Uncomplicated Life
- A Father's Memoir of His Exceptional Daughter
- By: Paul Daugherty
- Narrated by: Robert McCollum
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story5 out of 5 stars 30
A father’s exhilarating and funny love letter to his daughter with Down syndrome whose vibrant and infectious approach to life has something to teach all of us about how we can better live our own. Jillian Daugherty was born with Down syndrome. On the day Paul and Kerry, her parents, brought her home from the hospital they were flooded with worry and uncertainty, but also overwhelming love, which they channeled to “the job of building the better Jillian”. While their daughter had special needs, they refused to allow her to grow up needy - “expect, don’t accept” became their mantra.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Story on the Beauties of DS
- By Matthew on 04-16-23
By: Paul Daugherty
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Saving Alex
- When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began
- By: Alex Cooper
- Narrated by: Luci Christian Bell
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 245
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 224
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 224
Days after Alex Cooper told her parents she was gay, they drove Alex from their home in Southern California to Utah, where they signed over guardianship to fellow Mormons who promised to save Alex from her homosexuality. For eight harrowing months, Alex was held captive in an unlicensed "residential treatment program" modeled on the many "therapeutic" boot camps scattered across Utah.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I'm a Christian straight, divorced man, with 2 kids that lives in the heart of the Bible Belt.... Alabama
- By Ronald on 03-30-16
By: Alex Cooper
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Not Afraid of Life
- My Journey So Far
- By: Bristol Palin, Nancy French
- Narrated by: Bristol Palin
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
In this personal memoir, Bristol Palin opens up for the first time ever. She takes listeners behind the scenes, from growing up in Alaska to coming of age amid the media and political frenzy surrounding her mother's political rise; from becoming a single mother while still a teenager to coping as her relationship with the baby's father crumbled publicly. Through all of these ups and downs, Bristol learned how to face her challenges head-on, with courage and grace.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Forgiveness
- By Dennis on 01-16-16
By: Bristol Palin, and others
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 200
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 179
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 178
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Wilde Lake
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 575
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 511
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Story4 out of 5 stars 512
Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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2 out of 5 stars
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 418
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 256
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 256
At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4 out of 5 stars 162
Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,215
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 854
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 856
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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The Very Worst Missionary
- A Memoir or Whatever
- By: Jamie Wright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 316
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 278
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 281
After finding Jesus at a suburban megachurch, young Jamie Wright trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her husband, kids, and the family cat, she intends to serve God and make converts. But she soon loses faith and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair. Fortunately, Knives the cat is there, looking on with just enough disinterest to make her laugh...and dare her to try another way. That other way turns out to be telling the truth. She launches a renegade blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, which wins a large following.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Didn’t like the book
- By Jonathan on 04-17-20
By: Jamie Wright
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The Pact
- Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream
- By: Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt
- Narrated by: Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 268
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 210
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 212
All too often, we hear about the dangers of male friendships in which peer pressure prevails over common sense. But for George Jenkins, Sampson Davis, and Rameck Hunt, strong and supportive male friendship was a powerful antidote to the temptations and pitfalls of street life. It led three boys to make a vow to be there for one another, to encourage one another every step of the way, until they overcame the odds and became doctors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very Inspirational
- By Heather on 04-10-09
By: Drs. Sampson Davis, and others
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Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul
- Stories of Changes, Choices, and Growing Up for Kids Ages 9-13
- By: Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen, and others
- Narrated by: Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen, Irene Dunlap
- Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Our preteen years, ages nine to 13, can present some of the most difficult times in our young lives, a period of tremendous physical and emotional change. We're eager to leave the "kid" stage, yet we're uncertain about what adolescence will bring; we start hearing the familiar refrain "wait until you're older" far too often. Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul is a companion guide for these transitional years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great for children!
- By T Renaud on 01-04-15
By: Jack Canfield, and others
What listeners say about Counting Down
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Deedra
- 09-04-18
Counting Down
I enjoyed this book.It was a wonderful memoir of the ups and downs of foster parenting.It shows how the system is lacking and truely,no one knows how to fix it.Kristi Burns was an excellent narrator.I was given this book by the narrator,author or publisher free for an honest review.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Victoria Haugen
- 09-03-18
WOW. TRIUMPHS & TRAGEDIES OF FOSTER PARENTING...
This book really touched me. I don't have kids of my own and, although I have limited experience as a stepmom, can only imagine the amazing joys and heartwrenching sorrows involved in parenting. Foster parenting... wow, that really takes some special people. I was blown away by the challenges involved, the constant fear, and the neverending joy. I loved also hearing MIchael's writings, it really lent a great perspective. I applaud all parents, and especially foster parents, for the hard work and love they put into everything they do. Lovely story, and the narration was beautiful. Definitely recommended :)
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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1 person found this helpful