About this item
A New York Times Notable Book "Casts a searing eye on the labyrinth that is the American foster care system." - NPR's On Point Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system - the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents, the terrifying push out of foster care and into adulthood. Humanizing and challenging a broken system, To the End of June offers a tribute to resiliency and hope for real change. "[A] powerful . . . and refreshing read." - Chicago Tribune "A sharp critique of foster-care policies and a searching exploration of the meaning of family." - Publishers Weekly, starred review "Heart-rending and tentatively hopeful." - Salon
About the Author
Cris Beam's most recent book is To The End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) . Her first book was Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers (Harcourt, 2007) which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a Stonewall Honor Book. Her young adult novel, I am J, was released by Little, Brown in March 2011, and was named a Kirkus Best Book and Library Guild Selection of 2011, and is the first book with a transgender character to be placed on the state of California's recommended reading list for public high schools. Her short memoir, Mother, Stranger was published by The Atavist in 2012 and quickly reached the top ten on Kindle Singles. Cris teaches creative writing at Columbia University, New York University, and Bayview Women's Correctional Facility. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia and lives in New York City. She's currently working on a novel.
