Hope's Boy | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew Bridge
Publisher: Hyperion
Category: EBooks
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $7.96 (44%)
Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 12357
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.733092
Publication Date: February 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
At 7-years-old, Andrew Bridge was forced into foster care after authorities declared his mother Hope unfit to raise him. Barely an adult herself and with little money, Hope's mental instability made for an unsound and unpredictable home environment -- yet regardless of her illness, the deep and impenetrable love she shared with her son was the one thing they both clinged to. Andrew had to literally be pulled from his mother's arms -- a nightmare immensely painful, as there was nothing they both wanted more than to just be with each other. Though he had not desired or sought escape from the home he had known, the reprieve that foster care was intended to be for Andrew was no such thing -- it was a cruel and loveless environment, and without his mother, he felt more lost and alone than ever. Andrew endured 11 years in foster care -- an unfortunate irony, as he wasn't provided with any care at all. The abuse he suffered at the hands of the very adults designated to offer him a better life tried and tested his faith and confidence day after day. With all odds working against him, Andrew discovered that success in academia would bring him the escape he needed from the constant hell of his foster home, and he resisted any urges to run away or give up. The HOPE he never let go of and his relentless hard work through his teenage years ultimately earned him a scholarship to Wesleyan, followed by a law degree from Harvard.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...
 A must read for anyone in the helping professions June 27, 2009
M. Newmark (Forest Hills, NY)
This should be required reading for anyone in undergraduate or graduate programs in soial work, psychology, or education. Because it is the memoir of a now-successful client advocate who worked his way out of the foster care system with hie dignity and ego intact, the book gives an objective look at an imperfect foster care system while maintaining the author's wry humor and considerable intelligence. The book reads like a novel; I couldn't put it down.
Eye opener June 24, 2009
Donald Gustafson
We hear of bad things in the system, but this is an eye opener. It should be read by everyone.
From Heartache to Humilation to Vindication June 8, 2009
Adrian B. Collins (Koreatown - Los Angeles)
Reading Hope's Boy was for me a hauntingly detailed return to the enumerable and oh so painful episodes of the abject degradation that foster care remains. Honestly, I could only read small portions at a time for fear of bursting into tears, screaming out loud or curling up on the floor in a fetal position. I kid you not. What remains clear is that the last person considered in this vicious circle is the child.
Like Andrew's mother my mother too suffered advanced mental illness leaving me few options. Innocent and desperate you hope you'll be cared for and nurtured to your truest potential; rather you quickly realize you are but a subsidized commodity; chastised and rendered beholden to sadistic parents who put their blood descendants above you to carry out their bidding.
Fed the cheapest food available and denied every possible opportunity to be welcomed into the family, the slow embalming of your psyche with the formaldehyde of disdain begins. Your only option is to accept it, if you want to stay alive.
As though transported through time and space by some great machine; Bridges' meticulous prose forces the reader right down to the carpet and the bedspread of the foster home. He shuttles you out on prison buses to the plastic seats of the child welfare office waiting rooms, chilled by the cold empty stares of disaffected, desensitized case workers, orderlies and clerks. Nowhere in his text are you spared the bristling accuracy of his eidetic, evocative, laser sharp command of expository diction.
It is these eyes, in our culture, that are fashioned by God to watch and record the truth and to share it for all the world to see. To tear back the dark, craggy covers of putrefied bureaucracies whose purpose has mutated into an Orwellian encampment of neglect and denial. It is Bridge's achievement to vanquish these recalcitrant child welfare authorities and hold them accountable to the very atrocities and negligence they claim to expose.
Sadly there is much work to be done in this field of Foster Care; but Andrew Bridge has triumphantly and tirelessly waged this long over due battle with a mighty, and electrified pen.
 A good read, a sad story . . . May 25, 2009
Kelli B. (Massachusetts)
This book is hard to put down. Andrew Bridge's story of resilience is compelling and admirable. I would call it a good read, but not a great one. I wanted Bridge to delve more deeply into some areas and relationships. Certainly, no one could blame him for keeping some walls up to protect himself, but this defensive strategy blunted his story's impact in my opinion. While Bridge's portrayal of his foster mother was complex, his analysis of the relationship was less so. I got the feeling that blind loyalty to his mother, Hope, prevented him from acknowledging any redemptive qualities in the woman who took him in. Similarly, Bridge seems incapable of fully acknowledging his mother's mental-illness-induced abandonment. Demonizing one . . . deifying the
other . . . it just didn't feel right.
Incredible survival and coping instincts May 15, 2009
GA Girl (Georgia, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is amazing what this child was subjected to and that he not only survived, but thrived is truly inspiring. I greatly enjoyed this book as did my entire book club!
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