Wednesday, May 31, 2006

A story about "Another Place at the Table"

by Kathy Harrison

Last week, as my partner and I were leaving our second class of the series required for potential foster parents, we spoke with the foster parent who is co-leading our training. He mentioned that his wife had written a book (now two, actually) about their experience as foster parents, called “Another Place at the Table”. Voila! I pulled my copy of the book out of my bag, much to his surprise. I was already pretty excited that the author of this book was a foster parent for the same DSS office that we will be with, and now I was very happy to be looking prepared, though it was just sheer coincidence that had ordered the book a couple of weeks before.
This one hardly needs another spectacular review, I want to extoll its quality anyway. Having just finished one book on foster care, I picked this one up to start yesterday and couldn’t put it down. The stories of the children who grace these pages and the very real and unsentimental voice of the author had me riveted and tearful and joyful- I finished the whole thing in one sitting. The stories are frequently heartbreaking and the author’s experience clearly wrenching, but while it did much to scare me about becoming a foster parent, the underlying sense of hope and purpose came back to me every time, as it does for Kathy Harrison. I just hope that I can approach the task with similar good sense and resiliency, and am quite grateful to have Bruce Harrison at our classes to share his experience with us. So, of course, for me as a prospective foster parent, this book is amazing and I very much intend to read Kathy’s new book. This book is for everybody, though- it’s an amazing read. So read it- it’s worth consuming!

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