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Title details for To the End of June by Cris Beam - Available

To the End of June

The Intimate Life of American Foster Care

by Cris Beam
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
A New York Times Notable Book that “casts a searing eye on the labyrinth that is the American foster care system” (NPR’s On Point).
 
Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family.
 
Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system—the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents, the terrifying push out of foster care and into adulthood. Humanizing and challenging a broken system, To the End of June offers a tribute to resiliency and hope for real change.
 
“A triumph of narrative reporting and storytelling.” —The New York Times
 
“[A] powerful . . . and refreshing read.” —Chicago Tribune
 
“A sharp critique of foster-care policies and a searching exploration of the meaning of family.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Heart-rending and tentatively hopeful.” —Salon

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    October 9, 2018

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780547999531

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780547999531
      • File size: 2586 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 20, 2013
      Castaway kids and adult caretakers piece together fragile bonds in this heart-wrenching panorama of American foster families. Beam (Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers), herself a former teen runaway and sometime foster parent, paints sympathetic but clear-eyed portraits of everyone impacted by the foster-care system: biological parents who lose their children because they are deemed unfit to care for them, or because they have issues with drug abuse, poverty, or are incarcerated; inexperienced, overworked case workers who determine the fate of their charges based on fuzzy and clashing guidelines; and foster parents and the kids they shelter, both sides wary of the strangers who come into their lives but hopeful of forming nurturing homes. Beam analyzes how foster-care systems seesaw between draconian child-removal policies and initiatives to keep families intact, and dissects the contradictory laws and regulations that keep kids shuttling for years among different homes with little chance to form stable attachments. The core of the book is Beam’s subtle, evocative reportage on the emotional travails of foster homes, especially the mixed feelings of anxiety, hope, resentment, and guilt that roil kids when transferring their affections from dysfunctional biological relatives to provisional foster parents. Beam presents both a sharp critique of foster-care policies and a searching exploration of the meaning of family. Agent: Amy Williams, McCormick & Williams.

    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2013

      A Lambda Literary Award-winning journalist and foster mother, Beam uses individualized stories to clarify how badly our current foster care system fails the half-million children in its charge.

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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