A heartwarming, hopeful memoir brimming with humanitarianism and compassion.
A former foster child pays its forward by cultivating his own unconventional family.
In an effort to “never let a horrific childhood become a tragic adulthood,” foster care advocate and entrepreneur Scheer dedicated his life to ensuring foster children in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area never suffer the insecurity and instability he endured for years. The author describes a horrific childhood full of extreme physical abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father and a mother who’d married seven times and birthed 10 children, dragging her children with her through each bad relationship. The result was emotional scarring lasting well into his 30s, when Scheer met his future partner, Reece, a pragmatic man who would come to be known as “the voice of reason in our home.” Always wanting a family of his own, the author describes the couple’s grueling fostering process, riddled by delays and bureaucratic—and homophobic—red tape. Eventually, they adopted sister and brother Amaya and Makai, and soon after, two more boys, to become a blended family. Interpersonal bonding and finalizing the process in court proved challenging but also a unique opportunity for Scheer and Reece to realize their shared dream of fatherhood. In an unsparingly honest and warmhearted book, the author moves the narrative along with vivid details that are alternately joyful and sorrowful to read. Braided into his journey is a detailed account of his odyssey shuffling through a succession of barbaric foster homes, his emergence as a gay man, and his struggles through a series of toxic relationships. Though Scheer admits to still being haunted by the pain of his past, his loving devotion to his family is evident on every page of this stirring narrative. Furthering his initiative is his project Comfort Cases, which supplies backpacks filled with essential items to foster children in need and a yearly college scholarship fund for kids aging out of foster care into higher educational opportunities.
A heartwarming, hopeful memoir brimming with humanitarianism and compassion.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9663-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jeter Publishing/Gallery Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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