Another Place at the Table: A Story of Shattered Childhoods Redeemed by Love [Hardcover]

Kathy Harrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2003

For more than a decade, Kathy Harrison has sheltered a shifting cast of troubled youngsters-the offspring of prostitutes and addicts; the sons and daughters of abusers; and teenage parents who can't handle parenthood. What would motivate someone to give herself over to constant, largely uncompensated chaos? How does she manage her extraordinary blended family? Why would anyone voluntarily take on her job?

Harrison is no saint, but an ordinary woman doing heroic work. In Another Place at the Table, she describes her life at our social services' front lines-centered around three children who, when they come together in her home, nearly destroy it. Danny, age eight, is borderline mentally retarded and a budding pedophile (a frequent result of sexual abuse in boys). No other family will take him in. Tough, magnetic Sara, age six, is dangerously promiscuous (a typical manifestation of abuse in girls). Karen, six months, shares Danny's legal advocate, who must represent the interests of both. All three living under the same roof will lead to an inevitable explosion-but for each, Harrison's care offers the greatest hope of a reinvented childhood.

For readers of The Lost Children of Wilder, Expecting Adam, and Somebody Else's Kids, this is the first-person story of a woman whose compassionate best intentions for a child are sometimes all that stand between violence and redemption.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's 1988, and Harrison, a happily married mother of three, takes a job with Head Start, working with at-risk four-year-olds. Her heart goes out to the foster kids; before long, she and her husband take state training and adopt two sisters. Five children make a big family, but Harrison finds it tough to turn her back on needy children. She and her husband start accepting emergency care "hot-line" foster children, too; soon, Harrison quits her day job and becomes a full-time-overtime, really-foster parent. In addition to a stay-at-home mom's usual duties, Harrison is caring for children with serious emotional baggage and often complex medical problems. There are lawyers, therapists and social service people to meet with, plus the scheduling of visits to birth mothers, an emotional roller coaster for all parties. Birth mothers, she finds, are often "harder to hate than you might expect," and when an especially difficult child comes along, it's almost impossible to accept that even foster parents have their limitations. And how do you "give enough" to each child so they get a healthy sense of family, "without loving them too much to let them go in the end?" With over half a million American children in foster care today, Harrison's personal but vitally important account should be read by public policy makers and by anyone with a spare room in their home.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

With so much awful publicity surrounding foster parenting, Harrison's story of opening her home to foster children, three of whom she later adopted, is tender and inspiring. It is also filled with heartbreaking truths about abused and neglected children and a social service system that is overburdened and occasionally negligent itself. For 13 years, Harrison, along with her husband, three biological sons, and three adopted daughters, has fostered abandoned infants, runaway teens, disabled preschoolers, and children discharged from psychiatric hospitals. The Harrisons also became hot-line foster parents, willing to accept children in emergency situations with little or no notice. Harrison describes the process social workers use to place children, the horrifying circumstances of the children involved, and the training required of foster parents. She brings her story home by focusing, with heart-rending details, on four troubled children, including Danny, a developmentally delayed eight-year-old; Lucy, a deeply depressed eight-year-old abandoned by her mother; seven-month-old Karen, eventually adopted by the Harrisons and later diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome; and Sara, a six-year-old who had been sexually abused. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher (April 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585422002
• ISBN-13: 978-1585422005
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully honest look at the life of a foster family, April 22, 2003

By 

Becca B - See all my reviews

This review is from: Another Place at the Table: A Story of Shattered Childhoods Redeemed by Love (Hardcover)

Kathy's Harrison's memoir of her life as a foster parent to over one hundred children is at times funny, sad, and heart-wrenching, but always completely honest. She is honest about her own failures and weaknesses, about the difficulty in fostering troubled children, about the many shortcomings of the foster care system, and about the tremendous need each child in that system has for a loving, attentive family. She sugarcoats nothing, yet manages to show the reader each sweet, loving, unique child she took in under the labels of "abused," "troubled" and "mentally ill."

I began this book as someone who never imagined that I would want to be a foster parent, and finished it with the inspiration to pursue it as soon as possible. Harrison is not a superhero, as I previously imagined foster parents to be; she is an ordinary person who has given an extrodinary piece of herself to those members of our society who need it most. Her story, and that of the children she loves, deserves to be read.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good - and Tough, March 2, 2004

By 

Jill B "casegirl78" (Northeast Tennessee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Another Place at the Table: A Story of Shattered Childhoods Redeemed by Love (Hardcover)

As an adoption worker/counselor, I work hard at learning studying about foster care and the issues that face "my" kids and parents. I'd heard good things about this book, and thought I'd give it a try. I had to stop halfway through. I spend all day dealing with the horrible things of foster care - the terrible abuse, the ridiculous beauracracy, the burnt-out workers, and Kathy did a fantastic job of capturing this world. So realistic a job I could hardly call it after-hours reading.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn and know more about foster care.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for All Prospective Foster Parents, December 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Another Place at the Table: A Story of Shattered Childhoods Redeemed by Love (Hardcover)

This book should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in becoming a foster parent. Having been a social worker in the foster care system for many years, I appreciate Kathy's frank presentation of some of the most difficult issues that any foster parent may face. Some people go into fostering with a rosy picture of helping an innocent, angelic child, and those people are setting themselves up to fail. Kathy presents a realistic picture of the ups and downs of fostering, the good and the bad, that is definitely not for the faint of heart but is a true depiction of the feelings and constitution that it takes to bring wounded children into your home. I couldn't put it down.