The book's strength lies above all in what its author lived as a child: removed from her family at eighteen months old, she remained in foster care until adulthood. Now in her early thirties, she has become an expert in foster care and adoption, and she recalls that period as a kind of limbo. In these pages, she traces her own story alongside those of other children she met during an internship at the SOS Village in Trento—the same place where she herself was raised for many years, finding important figures of attachment to replace those missing from her own family.
While the reading can sometimes feel demanding, partly due to the length of certain chapters, this is nonetheless a valuable text for anyone seeking to understand the complex world of foster care. It brings home how crucial it is never to forget the relationship with a child's birth family when caring for a deprived minor; how essential it is to support, in different ways, parents who are themselves often deprived, and children who risk becoming depriving parents in turn.
Cristina Tersigni, 2012