A beautiful, yet emotionally challenging read...

books:


	• Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk: A Caseworker's Story Marc Parent, Anna Quindlen (foreword) Ballantine Books, 1998 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 186 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Author RETURNABLE GIRL

As social workers we need to always advocate for chilldren at risk, unfortunately there are some fundamental flaws to the "system" which makes even our most caring workers burn out too fast. A real, gripping, honest portrayal raises this book high above the rest. For a fictional account, readers might want to check out RETURNABLE GIRL, about a teen in foster care who must choose between the woman who wants to adopt her and the mother who abandoned her.

This is a book that sticks with you

Fresh out of college, Parent left rural Wisconsin for New York City and applied for a job at Emergency Child Services, which covered critical abuse and neglect cases during nights and weekends. He shares with us some of his most dramatic and intense cases, as well as his personal reflections. During his fourth year on the job, he makes a poor judgment call that has tragic consequences. In his ensuing depression, he remembers a story he heard in junior high about some old nuns turning stones in the desert...and comes to an energizing insight. I would highly recommend this book, particularly for anyone who works in human services and feels burn-out creeping in. If you cannot read the whole book, at least read the last chapter.

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A beautiful, yet emotionally challenging read...

I read this book very, very quickly. That's the only way to read it, to avoid breaking down and sobbing throughout every chapter. And there are some doozies in here.

Remember the story of the woman who threw two of her five children out the window of her tenement (something like five floors up) in New York City? Marc worked the aftermath of that case. The woman had never been investigated before, hadn't even been diagnosed with mental illness, nothing. She kept down a job, the kids saw their father (who wasn't married to the mother) every weekend, they were well-fed and well taken care of. She just snapped, just like that.

He told of an eight-year old girl diagnosed with gonorrhea. Pitbulls attacking caseworkers. Women so afraid of hexes they wouldn't let their children eat the food, for fear of glass in the food killing them. Homes so infested and horrible that the caseworkers were scared to enter. An eight year old boy, mentally ill and neglected by his druggie mother, left home alone and terrified that he would kill his brother. Marc talked him down from plunging the knife, which the boy held at his two year old brother's throat, and killing his brother. Another scary story was about a nine year old boy who basically just snapped and beat one of his cousins to death.

A good read. Read it fast, and then turn some stones of your own.

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wild stories, soberly told

When a book has 'children at risk' in the subtitle, you might expect some bloviating op-ed column in book form rife with numerous stats and a preening sense of self-importance in its outrage ("I'm a prophet. Hear me roar!").

But this author primarily tells stories, cases he dealt with as a NYC Emergency Child Services caseworker. By virtue of the sweat and tears of his experience, the author is able to relay wild heartbreaking stories without getting mired in a sentimental or sensational mood.

"...how quickly, with a simple twist of the dial, the deepest calm can turn to chaos--how stealthy the chaos is and what a convincing costume of serenity it wears..." The author shows how the rationale behind seemingly horrific acts can follow some kind of logic underneath. A boy considers killing his baby brother, but not because the boy is demon possessed. Two caseworkers remove a child who is kicking and screaming in front of disgusted onlookers, but are really following the protocols of their job as best as they can under the circumstances.

This book is a real eye opener into some dark corners where children have lived. Still, the author rounds out the book with some sobering, yet heartening things to say. "Where despair and abuse spread back across generations, there are no such things as knockout punches." "The only way to lose this fight is to stop fighting."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Why does an infant die of malnutrition? Why does an eight-year-old hold a knife to his brother's throat? Or a mother push her cherished daughter twenty-three floors to her death? Marc Parent, a city caseworker, searched the streets--and his heart--for the answers, and shares them in this powerful, vivid, beautifully written book.

WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR

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