Sent to another foster home when her father returns to rehab, Jane discovers that family is more than just relatives and that home can be found in unlikely places.

"Thirteen-year-old Eli likes baggy clothes, baseball caps, and one girl in particular. Her seventeen-year-old sister Anna is more traditionally feminine; she loves boys and staying out late. They are sisters ... Their dad has long been out of the picture, and their mom lives at the mercy of her next drink. When their mom lands herself in enforced rehab, Anna and Eli are left to fend for themselves. Eli and Anna have each gotten used to telling lies...

A group of foster children build a home of their own

Relates the author's harrowing family circumstances that led to his placement in the equally daunting foster-care system, and describes how he beat the odds through high academic achievement

Despite her power to control the wind with her emotions, Red finds herself bouncing from foster home to foster home until she settles in with a quirky couple who own a petting zoo, but her comfort is soon upended with the arrival of her birth mother.

Regina's Calcaterra memoir, Etched in Sand, is an inspiring and triumphant coming-of-age story of tenacity and hope. Regina Calcaterra is a successful lawyer, New York State official, and activist. Her painful early life, however, was quite different. Regina and her four siblings survived an abusive and painful childhood only to find themselves faced with the challenges of the foster-care system and intermittent homelessness in the shadows of Manhattan...