Child C: Surviving a Foster Mother's Reign of Terror

Damaged

Cathy Glass · 339 pages

'I'm not bad, am I, Cathy?' I held her closer to me. 'No sweet, of course you're not bad. What was happening to you was bad. It was never your fault. You mustn't think that.' Eight-year old Jodie's behavior is so challenging and disturbing that she has already been through five foster carers in four months. But it is Jodie who is the real victim. Only Cathy has th

The Lost Boy

Dave Pelzer · 272 pages

Imagine a young boy who has never had a home. His only possessions are the old torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. His only world is isolation and fear. Although this young boy has been rescued from his alcoholic mother, the real hurt is just beginning-he has no place to call *home*. This is the first paragraph on the back of the book. While I feel it sums up the book pretty well, I think some

Dorie, the girl nobody loved

Doris Van Stone

"Someone has said that when you have nothing left but God, you realized that God is enough. God had stood beside me when no one else wanted me. He was not going to abandon me now. God would have to heal the emotional pain that throbbed through my body." As a child, Dorie was rejected by her mother, sent to live in an orphanage where she was regularly beaten by the orphanage director, was beaten ti

A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home

Steve Pemberton · 264 pages

The Kid : A True Story

Kevin Lewis · 256 pages

Kevin Lewis grew up on a council estate in South London. Beaten and starved by his parents, ignored by the social services and bullied at school, he was offered a chance to escape this nightmare world and was put into care. Despite his best efforts to make things work out, his life spiralled out of control. At the age of 17 he became caught up in the criminal underworld of London, where he was kno

Street Kid

Judy Westwater, Wanda Carter · 320 pages

After a childhood lived in terror, in 1994, Judy was presented with an Unsung Heroes Award for her charity work with street children in South Africa. Her moving story came to light after Judy was interviewed by John Peel on BBC's "Home Truths". This title offers the story of her early years, a story of a child who refused to give up.

Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island

Regina Calcaterra · 306 pages

Calcaterra and her siblings endured a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons. She managed to rise above her past while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together. An unforgettable reminder that, regardless of social status, the American dream is still within reach for those who have the desire and the determination to succeed.

A Piece of Cake

Cupcake Brown · 480 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The heart-wrenching, uplifting tale about a woman named Cupcake “[Cupcake] Brown’s confessional . . . memoir is one you can’t easily put down. Her life is nothing short of a miracle.”—Chicago Sun-Times There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-dea

The Boy No One Loved

Casey Watson

Three Little Words: A Memoir

Ashley Rhodes-Courter · 320 pages

Ashley spent nine years in foster care after being taken away from her mother. She endured many caseworkers, moving from school to school and manipulative, humiliating and abusive treatment from one foster family. See how she survives and eventually thrives against the odds.

A Man Named Dave

David J. Pelzer · 374 pages

Finding Fish

Antwone Quenton Fisher, Mim Eichler Rivas · 339 pages

The Anti-Cool Girl

Rosie Waterland · 304 pages

Ellen Foster

Kaye Gibbons · 126 pages

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

Helpless: The True Story of a Neglected Girl Betrayed and Exploited by the Neighbour She Trusted

Marianne Marsh

Childhood Interrupted

Kathleen O'Malley · 250 pages

In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother and placed in an industrial school ran by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were per

Trapped: The Terrifying True Story of a Secret World of Abuse

Rosie Lewis · 293 pages

Phoebe, an autistic nine-year-old girl, is taken into police protection after a chance comment to one of her teachers alerts the authorities that all might not be what it seems in her comfortable, middle-class home. Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis accepts the youngster as an emergency placement knowing that her autism will represent a challenge - not only for her but also for the rest of the

Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

Behind Closed Doors: A True Story of Abuse, Neglect and Survival Against the Odds

Jenny Tomlin · 264 pages

Girl Unbroken: A Sister's Harrowing Story of Survival from The Streets of Long Island to the Farms of Idaho

Regina Calcaterra, Rosie Maloney · 488 pages

"They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives 'like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path'. But when Regina discloses the t

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes

Martha Long · 478 pages

Born a bastard to a teenage mother in the slums of 1950s' Dublin, Martha grew up in squalid, freezing tenements, clothed in rags and forced to beg for food. Here she tells the story of her early life and recreates a lost era in which the shadow of the Catholic Church loomed large and if you didn't work, you didn't eat.

White Oleander

Janet Fitch · 390 pages

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Stitches

David Small · 336 pages

Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and finalist for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards: the prize-winning children's author depicts a childhood from hell in this searing yet redemptive graphic memoir. One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched toget

Amelia's Story: A Childhood Lost

D.G. Torrens · 386 pages