Stranger Care

April 1, 2021
A writer and her husband take in a newborn as a foster child in rural Idaho. Sentilles, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and author of Breaking Up With God, among other books, lovingly cared for baby Coco for nine months while her troubled birth mother, Evelyn, worked on her personal issues. It's clear that the author, who had reluctantly agreed with her husband not to have biological children, hoped the arrangement with Coco would lead to adoption. After becoming qualified to foster, the couple turned down many children. "We said no a lot," writes Sentilles. "To sibling set after sibling set. To older child after older child. To child in need after child in need after child in need." The author also discusses Idaho's status as a "reunification state," where "reunifying foster children with their biological parents is considered a victory." This leaves readers in the uncomfortable position of feeling that Sentilles, so emotionally and spiritually invested, has set herself up for an inevitable devastation. The social workers she encountered come across as chilly and defensive in the text, though it's obvious they were also harried and overworked. The author portrays Coco in a consistently glowing light; she was a charming "delight" seemingly everywhere she went. Though interspersed passages about how whales and trees care for each other and parables from the Bible offer welcome relief from the pain of the central story, they don't provide much added value. Throughout, Sentilles scrupulously examines her own thoughts and feelings--including her guilt that she would be happy to see Evelyn fail or "flip her truck" if it meant she could keep Coco--but it's evident that she is not past that chapter of her life. In the epilogue, the author chronicles the continuing battle among her and Coco's unfit biological parents, social workers, and lawyers. A tragic, occasionally uplifting story that reveals more about the author's psychological state than the foster care system.

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April 1, 2021
Interdisciplinary scholar Sentilles (Draw Your Weapons, 2017) and her husband, Eric, talked for years about whether or not to have a child before they decided to adopt through the foster system. As nonrelatives their custody of any potential foster child would be considered ""stranger care."" In this memoir of their experience in Oregon and then in Idaho, Sentilles reveals early on that both joy and heartbreak lie therein. With nimble prose spanning many brief, titled chapters, Sentilles shares the practical, transcendent, and disheartening realities of fostering, alongside evocative descriptions of various forms of stranger care in nature, among trees, birds, and whales. When she and Eric meet three-day-old baby Coco, the love is instantaneous. But Coco's reunification with her mother is the state's goal, and Sentilles' only, devastating hope is to somehow make it her goal, too. Examining her pure love for Coco, her shame for wanting to keep her, and her privilege as a white woman of means, Sentilles also questions the ethics and inequities of the overburdened, underfunded foster system. Her story seems to expose the possibility that maybe the only thing we humans can control is how we take care of one another and our world. Memoir lovers and book groups will be enthralled.

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Starred review from May 1, 2021

Sentilles (Draw Your Weapons) describes her experience of adoption and foster care in this memoir of grief and beauty. She and her husband become foster parents in Idaho to a baby girl named Coco. The baby's mother, Evelyn, had left her hometown and crossed state lines to give birth; she had a son in foster care and struggled with addiction, unemployment, and homelessness. Meanwhile, the baby's father, Cody, is in prison. Sentilles learns that the goal of Idaho's foster care system is to eventually reunite biological parents and children, but the family and welfare services are woefully underfunded, and Sentilles and Evelyn agree that Coco lacks the advocate she is legally entitled to. The author sheds light on the system's racial inequity and its bias toward wealthy parents, and she writes with compassion about Evelyn's and Cody's lives. Sentilles and her husband fall in love with Coco, and she describes being agonized to relinquish her after nine months. VERDICT Sentilles writes candidly and humanely about her experience of building a family beyond immediate kin and discovering the depths of love and protection. Essential reading for those hoping to be foster parents.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

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