We Were Once a Family : : A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

Title We Were Once a Family : : A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
Book Number DB114060
Length 7 hours, 38 minutes Digital talking book. 2 levels and 24 navigation points. Digitally mastered.
Names Asgarian, Roxanna.
Title Status Active
Medium Digital Book
Download Link https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.114060
Downloadable talking book.
Narrator El-Attar, Suehyla
Language English
Annotation "On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew very little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children-with fateful consequences. In the manner of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and other classic works of investigative journalism, Roxanna Asgarian's We Were Once a Family is a revelation of vulnerable lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian became the first reporter to put the children's birth families at the center of the story. We follow the author as she runs up against the intransigence of a state agency that removes tens of thousands of kids from homes each year in the name of child welfare, while often failing to consider alternatives. Her reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as children of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America's most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families." -- Provided by publisher. -- Commercial audiobook.
Local Subject Nonfiction - NF
Crime, True Crimes, Criminals - 364C
Social problems - Criminology, Crime - 364
Adult Book - AD
Adult NonFiction - AN
Downloadable books - DL
Murder fiction - MYSM
ABLE - Staff picks - ABLE
Audience Notes Female narrator. NLS/BPH
Unrated. NLS/BPD
Commercial audiobook. NLS/BPH
Contains strong language. NLS/BPH
LC Subject Adopted children - Crimes against - United States
African American children
Children - Crimes against - United States
Children - Institutional care - United States
Foster children - Care - United States
Foster home care - United States
Interracial adoption - United States
Murder-suicide - United States
Call Number 364.15230973 ANF
Released 2023
Publication Info Washington, D.C. : National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress, 2023
Original Publication Reissue of: [New York] : Macmillan Audio, 2023. 9781250883629
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