Hope's Boy: A Memoir

When Andrew Bridge was seven years old, he and his mother---a mentally unstable woman who loved her child more than she could care for him---slid deeper and deeper into poverty, until they were reduced to scavenging for food in trash bins. Welfare officials did little more than threaten to take Andrew away, until a social worker arrived with a police escort and did just that while his mother screamed on the sidewalk. And so began Andrew's descent into the foster care system---"care" being a t…