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Stranger Care
- A Memoir of Loving What Isn't Ours
- Narrated by: Sarah Sentilles
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
New York Times Editors' Choice
"A powerful, heartbreaking, necessary masterpiece.” (Cheryl Strayed, number-one New York Times best-selling author of Wild)
The moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn - about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love and protect people beyond our immediate kin.
May you always feel at home.
After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system’s goal is the child’s reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question them, evaluate them, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their lives - even if it means most likely having to give the child back. After years of starts and stops, and endless navigation of the complexities and injustices of the foster care system, a phone call finally comes: a three-day-old baby girl named Coco, in immediate need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home.
“You were never ours”, Sarah tells Coco, “yet we belong to each other.”
A love letter to Coco and to the countless children like her, Stranger Care chronicles Sarah’s discovery of what it means to mother - in this case, not just a vulnerable infant but the birth mother who loves her, too. Ultimately, Coco’s story reminds us that we depend on family, and that family can take different forms. With prose that Nick Flynn has called “fearless, stirring, rhythmic”, Sentilles lays bare an intimate, powerful story with universal concerns: How can we care for and protect one another? How do we ensure a more hopeful future for life on this planet? And if we're all related - tree, bird, star, person - how might we better live?
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Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character "Pat", Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say.
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I Love Julia Sweeney
- By Lisa on 04-05-13
By: Julia Sweeney
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In the Shadow of the Valley
- A Memoir
- By: Bobi Conn
- Narrated by: Bobi Conn
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.
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Hard Pass
- By Kathryn Liggett on 06-13-20
By: Bobi Conn
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Invisible Child
- Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
- By: Andrea Elliott
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care.
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Narration is completely over the top
- By Heather on 10-14-21
By: Andrea Elliott
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Finding Chika
- A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the 40-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says "no one in Haiti can help you with."
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BUY READ AND RECOMMEND THIS BOOK
- By The Birds. on 11-05-19
By: Mitch Albom
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Everything You Ever Wanted
- A Memoir
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Jillian Lauren
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei's harem, an experience she immortalized in her best-selling memoir, Some Girls. In her 30s, Jillian's most radical act is learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs.
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Great for adoptive families
- By berry bomb on 07-06-22
By: Jillian Lauren
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The Fourth Child
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Winter
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.
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Just OK - Considered Bailing
- By Madeleine Homan on 04-18-21
By: Jessica Winter
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Missing Parts
- By: Lucinda Berry
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up abandoned by her father and raised by a single mother, Celeste was determined to create the perfect family - but even perfect families have secrets. Her days are filled with a rewarding career, a devoted husband, and her four-year-old daughter. Celeste is the only one who knows the precarious house of cards her family is built upon - until the day her daughter falls critically ill. Then her world quickly spirals out of control, her secret threatening to destroy her marriage, family, reputation, and sanity.
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SPOILER ALERT. Sigh...
- By Kelly on 10-08-20
By: Lucinda Berry
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The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
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Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
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The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
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Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
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Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
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Ghostbelly
- By: Elizabeth Heineman
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Ghostbelly is Elizabeth Heineman’s personal account of a home birth that goes tragically wrong—ending in a stillbirth—and the harrowing process of grief and questioning that follows. It’s also Heineman’s unexpected tale of the loss of a newborn: before burial, she brings the baby home for overnight stays.
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Healing
- By ngsquared on 04-17-23
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The Good Father
- By: Diane Chamberlain
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Arielle DeLisle, Emily Durante
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Four years ago, 19-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he's never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe. But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he's worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble....
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A must-read tear jerker!
- By Wayne on 12-01-15
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The Girls Who Went Away
- The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade
- By: Ann Fessler
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade.
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Sad but True ... and Helpful
- By Kim Kavanagh on 01-05-17
By: Ann Fessler
What listeners say about Stranger Care
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- barbara s redfield
- 05-18-23
Behind the scene look at foster care system Personal and Heatbreaking
Brilliantly written saga of adoption process through the foster care world. Moving look at mother’s love for her child and the struggle to move from foster parent to permanent legal parent. Many aspects of spiritual and emotional moments expertly described.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-30-21
Beautiful story of love
For those of us who foster, this is such a raw and beautiful reflection of what we go through, the love, the loss.
Sarah, I would love to connect with you, I’m writing as well and would love your thoughts. Twitter @mujazul
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- Brooke
- 02-17-23
A Realistic Story of Love and Foster Care
This is a story that sheds a realistic look at the foster care system. It’s heartbreaking at the core but ultimately a story of love and what being a parent looks like in different forms.
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- Karen
- 06-14-24
Slow speaking narrator
The narrator spoke so slowly that it was almost impossible not to feel like the words were being pulled out. I set the speed higher and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the book. It’s a heartfelt story, and after working ten years in child welfare investigations, the author is very accurate—she doesn’t fluff anything or sugarcoat topics for herself or the Department of Social Services.
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- Quiñones
- 09-13-22
Great book for foster parents!
This book help us move forward from the lost (at the same time the gain) of walking with the biological dad of a baby that we foster since his 3 day of life. I will recommend this books to anyone in the process of fostering.
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- Mary
- 04-20-22
Heartbreaking and beautiful
This was so gripping and moving — could not stop listening. Such a story of love.
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- Ken in MN
- 12-05-23
Interesting Read - Disheartening Perspective
As a child of not only an addict, but also the daughter of a woman who was a foster child during her own youth, I was very drawn to this story. The book absolutely kept me engaged, and some of the depictions of the foster care system are certainly accurate. That said, this foster mother’s perspective of the birth mother and her continued desire to see her fail for her own gain was incredibly disheartening.
It was pretty unsettling to hear her continuous “holier than thou” perception of herself, and how dehumanizing and stigmatizing her views of the biological mother were. It’s hard enough for addicts to get on their feet and become suitable parents when they have support, let alone when someone who is meant to be in their corner is actively praying for their failure.
While the author does acknowledge her own selfishness, her later attempts to support the mother did not feel genuine. Top it off with how many children they rejected… praise to this couple for how much love they have to give to this child, but they really should have gone the route of private adoption.
-Nat W
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- Anonymous User
- 11-06-21
Would not recommend.
Between the readers monotonous delivery and the unlikability of the main characters, I did not enjoy this book.
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- Blaine M.
- 05-07-22
That’s it?
As a fellow foster parent and social worker, I’m confused by the ending. What ever happened in the court proceeding with Coco once the family hired an attorney? What an odd place to end a book. Also, no state will send a child across state lines without having an agreement in place between both states (ICPC) so I’m shocked that the family’s attorney didn’t advise them of this from the get go. Or maybe the attorney did and it wasn’t shared in the book. We also don’t hear about what happened after Coco came back into care a second time and if either parent was successful in having her return home… I was also extremely turned off at how the author was so against reunification, hoping that the parent wouldn’t succeed and even when Evelyn seemed to be doing better and reunification appeared feasible, the support towards mother seemed very half-assed and borderline manipulative. It was also disheartening to hear about the number of children they turned down and how long their foster care license was open before they decided they wanted to foster Coco. It felt like the family had 0% interest in actually providing foster care (which is intended to be temporary). The family really should’ve went the route of private adoption.
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1 person found this helpful