Foster Memoir

With over 50 guided questions organized into sections about your childhood years, teen years, young adulthood, and later years to help track your life story and leave a legacy. This journal offers an excellent means to preserve memories and discovers hidden aspects of yourself and your journey. Here is the tool to help you write your life history, to encourage and inspire others with your stories.

When Deborah Gold and her husband signed up to foster parent in their rural mountain community, they did not foresee that it would lead to a roller-coaster 15 years of involvement with the traumatized, yet resilient, birth family. In Counting Down, Gold artfully tells her story of forging a family within an often confounding system in ways that defied the expectations of everyone involved.

Precious Brady-Davis remembers the sense of being singular and grappling with “otherness." Born into traumatic circumstances, Davis was brought up in the Omaha foster care system and the Pentecostal faith. As a biracial, gender-nonconforming kid, she felt displaced. Yet she realized by coming into her identity that she had a purpose all along. In I Have Always Been Me, Brady-Davis reflects on a childhood of neglect, instability, and abandonment.

Despite lacking pitch, rhythm, or tone, Florence Foster Jenkins became one of America's best-known sopranos, celebrated for her unique recordings and her sell-out concert at Carnegie Hall. Born in 1868 to wealthy Pennsylvanian parents, Florence was a talented young pianist, but her life was thrown into turmoil when she eloped with Frank Jenkins, a man twice her age. The marriage proved a disaster, and, in order to survive, Florence was forced to abandon her dreams of a musical career and teach the piano.

Kimber had it all—talent, drive, and opportunity—until she sacrificed everything for love. Three decades later, trapped in a toxic marriage, divorce wasn’t an option but a necessity. Her life depended on it. His controlling and abusive behavior didn’t end when she finally found the courage to leave. In fact, it got worse. Bound by the welfare of her children, Kimber remained in the marital home during the divorce, enduring a living nightmare within walls built from his cruelty.

General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army during World War II, faced the daunting task not only of overseeing two theaters of a global conflict but also of selecting the best generals to carry out American grand strategy. Marshall and His Generals is the first and only book to focus entirely on that selection process and the performances, both stellar and disappointing, that followed from it. Stephen Taaffe explores how and why Marshall selected the Army's commanders.

He was a captain in the U.S. Air Force. She was a psychologist in Fayetteville, North Carolina. On the surface, Marty and Michelle Theer appeared to be the perfect married couple. But no one knew of the double life Michelle was leading. Tired of spending one too many nights apart from Marty who was often away on his flight missions, Michelle turned to the Internet to meet men and relieve her loneliness. With each encounter, Michelle became more daring in her sexual escapades. But one man stood out among all the rest: former U.S. Army Staff Sergeant John Diamond.

In an extension of his New York Times best-selling book Blindsided, author Richard M. Cohen depicts one year in the lives of five individuals who are living with serious chronic illness and their families. These "citizens of sickness", as Cohen calls them, were selected for the diversity of their ages, races, socioeconomic positions, illness types, stages of wellness, and gender.

After the death of his mother, Paul and his brothers and sister spent the rest of their childhoods in a succession of children’s and foster homes where they found themselves at the mercy of adults more interested in their own welfare than providing a loving home.

Dinesh D'Souza, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller America, is back with this darkly entertaining deconstruction of Hillary Clinton's flawed character and ideology. From her Alinskyite past to her hopes for America's progressive future, the presumptive Democratic nominee is revealed to be little more than a political gangster intent on controlling the nation's wealth.

In CinderGirl, Christina tells her piercing and poignant story of leaving behind homelessness to become Ms. California and the founder of a nonprofit organization that provides advocacy for foster-care children.

As a student and teacher of history, Robin Foster is well aware that humans have persisted through major hardships as long as they have existed. When faced with the anxious dread many felt at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Foster began seeking stories of tenacious women of the American West who had survived their own hardships in a world that threw the unexpected at them. During one of the most uncertain periods of her life, Foster hit the road, embarking on a journey to find these determined women of the past and finding herself along the way.

From Foster Care to Millionaire offers all the components you’d expect from the success story of a young entrepreneur with Asperger's - motivation, drive, perseverance, focus, and passion. You might call it a rags-to-riches tale, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But that here-to-there narrative is only the top layer. Cody’s story unfolds to reveal a narrative that is more complicated yet simpler and more central to the human experience.

After wandering through the valley of despair...facing trauma. I stumbled upon baking and it saved my life.

Lyrical and raw, It Happened Like This is a book about misogyny in all its forms, about heroism and villainy, about class and the climate of neglect created by austerity, but most importantly it’s a book about women and their power, explored through the prism of Vicky’s story.

One evening in 1980, ICU Nurse Maryann Foster walked into a patient room expecting nothing out of the ordinary. What she found on the other side of the door, however, changed her life forever.

Faith to Foster is a candid look into the life of ordinary foster parents T.J. and Jenn Menn. It is a journey chronicling their decision-making process, how the children arrived, the birth parents struggle to rehabilitate, help from friends and family, emotional goodbyes, and how faith in Jesus empowered them through it all. TJ and Jenn share their experiences and feelings in a way that encourages any listener to serve their neighbors, not just foster parents. Faith to Foster reminds Christians how God can use them to make a difference in their community.

Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul documents the beloved singing star’s rocky personal life and internationally acclaimed show business career. An in-depth and frank examination of Aretha, this definitive biography traces her career from her beginnings as a 12-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, recording her first album at the age of 14, a major recording contract at 18, and stardom in her 20s, right up through her headline-grabbing 2010 health scare, to her triumphant return: singing to her cheering Detroit hometown fans in summer 2011.

In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help - it seemed the fate of the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.

For Your Consideration: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson looks at the distinct phases of the legend’s career, examining the ways in which he has become both an onscreen heartthrob and an off-screen hero. Composed of five critical essays and fun extras, including an all-Rock version of the Oscars, a quiz identifying the best Rock character to take to the prom, and a definitive ranking of The Rock's catchphrases, this book is sure to satisfy pop-culture enthusiasts and The Rock's hardcore fans alike.