Silas Dillons chemically dependent, emotionally unstable birth mother abandons him in a typical bureaucratic foster care system; and she remains selfishly unwilling to release him for adoption. Alternating between brief stays with his unstable mother and various foster homes, Silass growing loneliness, alienation, anger, and self-destructive nature make coping through youth and early adulthood formidable.
Centered around the extremely widespread issue with our foster care system
Provides a facts driven, real life experience while simultaneously offering a emotionally compelling story line
There are over 400,000 children being cared for by foster families today
Of those, there are over 100,000 waiting to be adopted, and of those, less than 50,000 actually get through the adoption process
This book has an audience of millions, touching those providing foster care, those in it, and all of their families
A story about childhood homelessness and estrangement, and about the love and nurture that changed everything.Besides being a published novelist (A Fruitful Field and Silas Dillon of Cary County) a published poet (Broken Prose, Spoken Poems) and essayist; besides having served as a chaplain of a parochial high school for six years, teaching high school English for twenty-nine years, chairing an English department for two years, coaching high school soccer for ten years, holding a Masters degree, serving as a youth leader for two years, Cliff is the father of eight children- two biological and six adopted (foreign and domestic), and has been a foster father for seven years to six foster children, experiencing many of the frustrations of working with the bureaucracy of the foster care and family court systems in New York City. Hes been engaged in one lengthy court struggle over one childs custody. He has also encountered the trauma of losing a child following all the jarring experiences of an enduring terminal illness.Cliff,l“˜