Foster Child Memoirs

This memoir offers an intimate look at the generational impact of alcoholism within a New York family. By documenting his journey through foster care and family shelters, the author illustrates the systemic nature of addiction and trauma. It is both a tragic exploration of a broken childhood and an inspiring blueprint for survival and recovery "Gut wrenching, inspiring and crushing as only real life can be. A guide out of hell if you're determined to make the journey." - book lover "Where Has This Great Book Been Hiding?" - bookworm "Fast-moving, gripping...." - NY Shannon "... very ...

This Is Not A Sad Story. It’s a story about the effects of rejection and brokenness experienced by an abused child. And this child’s desire to conquer these feelings while maneuvering through flawed society, government, and religious systems. It’s reenactments of events during childhood abuse, followed by assessments of the events by the same person, as a healed adult. Will I ever be on the receiving end of care, protection, and love? Or is it only a dream for me but a reality for others? Can this hole in my heart, this place of emptiness, and longing within, ever become repaired?

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell finally tells the story that rivals all of the works that precede it: her own. Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere...

This memoir that "will take your breath away" chronicles a harrowing journey through homelessness and poverty in New York City, followed by a turbulent experience in foster care (Jeanette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle). This powerful memoir exposes the harsh...

Breeanna's life was marked by homelessness, addiction, and survival on the streets of Georgetown. Living in a deteriorating motorhome and caught in a volatile relationship with her boyfriend, Anthony, she faced overwhelming challenges. When she became pregnant, she knew she couldn’t care for her child. Desperate for support, she turned to her father, who entrusted the baby to compassionate family friends—a devoted couple determined to provide the love and stability the infant needed to recover from opioid withdrawal. But their efforts were upended when Anthony emerged from jail, ...

The No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller. At just eight years old, Jodie is violent, aggressive and extremely challenging. Five carers in four months have been unable to cope, but there is one last hope: Cathy Glass… As Jodie begins to trust Cathy and make progress, shocking details about her past...

Ward of the State: A Memoir of Foster Care tells what happened to a little Black boy from the inner city of Detroit. This is the story of Karlos Dillard, who was severely neglected by his mother, who often left him and his siblings at home alone for weeks to fend for themselves. Enduring severe neglect and abuse, the boy was removed by the State of Michigan and put into foster care. Karlos was removed from his mother's care just to end up in foster homes that treated him worse. Karlos was told he was not loved, he was not wanted, and he was nothing but a ward of the state.

When a sister they never knew appears, they are determined to find answers to what caused their separation. Their search leads them to discover the atrocities they endured at the hands of a broken foster care and adoption system. Will they find answers or realize that it’s still happening? Endorsements: The Glider tells a story - Linda’s story - of the beauty that can come from brokenness. While not shying away from the life-long effects trauma, foster care, a flawed child welfare system, and even adoption can have on a child, she illustrates the life-changing potential of adoption to ...

ONE REMARKABLE WOMAN OVER 30 YEARS OF FOSTERING CARER TO MORE THAN 150 CHILDREN Tayo arrives at Cathy’s with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well-spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The...

Innocent is the shocking true story of little Molly and Kit, siblings, aged 3 years and 18 months, who are brought into care as an emergency after suffering non-accidental injuries. Aneta and Filip, the children’s parents, are distraught when their children are taken into care. Aneta maintains...

Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his mid-teens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the...

ONE REMARKABLE WOMAN. OVER 30 YEARS OF FOSTERING. THE STORY OF ONE CHILD SHE COULD NEVER FORGET. Seven-year-old Reece is the last of six siblings to be taken into foster care. He can't cope with school and is often excluded for his violent and aggressive outbursts. But behind that anger is a...

Shenandoah Chefalo is on a wholly dysfunctional journey through a childhood with neglectful, drug- and alcohol-addicted parents. She endures numerous moves in the middle of the night with just minutes to pack, multiple changes in schools, hunger, cruelty, and loneliness. Finally at the age of 13, Shen had had enough. After being abandoned by her mother for months at her grandmother's retirement community, she asks to be put into foster care. Surely she would fare better at a stable home than living with her mother?

Cruel To Be Kind is the true story of Max, aged 6. He is fostered by Cathy while his mother is in hospital with complications from type 2 diabetes. Cruel To Be Kind is the true story of Max, aged 6. He is fostered by Cathy while his mother is in hospital with complications from type 2 diabetes...

Antwone Quenton Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment his single mother gave birth to him in prison. As a foster child, he suffered more than a dozen years of emotional abandonment and physical abuse, until he escaped and forged a life on the streets. And just as his life was about...

Undeterred is a moving ride through the life of one determined Vietnamese orphan boy named Long who, despite the bigotry and hate he faces, carves out a place for himself in America. This is a positive immigrant success story. With tanks approaching and bombs exploding mere yards away, five-year-old Long has only moments to decide whether to risk the jump to join his brother in the water below. The boys must leave everything they know to survive and unknowingly have embarked on an intense journey that will lead to a new life in America. The boys face new perils in the United States and find...

Finding Stevie is a dark and poignant true story that highlights the dangers lurking online. When Stevie’s social worker tells Cathy, an experienced foster carer, that Stevie, 14, is gender fluid she isn’t sure what that term means and looks it up. Stevie, together with his younger brother...

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE “A powerful, heartbreaking, necessary masterpiece.”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild The moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn—about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love...

It’s late on Friday night when Casey’s mobile starts to ring. She is expecting it to be her daughter Riley. But it isn’t Riley. It’s a woman from the Emergency Duty Team. So begins Casey and Mike’s latest fostering challenge – a fifteen-year-old girl called Keeley who’s run away...

One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard's seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle - just in case her brother missed.