Hope's Boy: A Memoir (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "NO ONE ASKS to come back to these places," I whispered..." (more)
Key Phrases: Grandma Kate, Miss O'Malley, Los Angeles County (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this memoir of a decade spent in foster care, Bridge illuminates the horrors of a system that, in its clumsy attempts to save children, he argues, all too frequently condemns them to physical and emotional abuse. The child of a teenage mother who divorced her abusive husband soon after Bridge was born, he watched helplessly as his mother disintegrated under the impact of isolation and poverty. At the age of seven, Bridge was dragged away from his mother, literally, by police and warehoused in an enormous California juvenile facility patrolled by armed guards. The state eventually transferred him to a foster family dominated by an obese, bullying Estonian woman who had survived imprisonment in Dachau as a child. At 17, as he prepared to leave foster care for college and freedom, Bridge finally had a reunion with the mother he never stopped missing. In his narration of this unending nightmare, Bridge shows particular skill in portraying his isolation and the defenses he constructed to survive it. He also has a talent for grotesques, particularly that of the monstrous foster mother who revisited the misery of her upbringing on her foster children. Bridge's obsessive focus on his loneliness and his two mothers is so intense that a more balanced picture of his life fails to emerge and his attachment to another foster child remains unexplained. Yet Bridge, a Harvard Law School graduate who has devoted his career to children's rights, has provided remarkable insights into a dark corner of American society. (Feb.)
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Review

"Andrew Bridge has written an affecting, moving memoir which in the end is a poignant cry for rethinking our foster care system. Hope's Boy will stay with you long after you've put it down." -- Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River

"Bridge, a Harvard Law School graduate who has devoted his career to children's rights, has provided remarkable insights into a dark corner of American society." -- Publishers Weekly

"In luminous prose and heartwrenching detail, Andrew Bridge reminds us to honor the power of love in our fractured world." -- Caroline Kennedy

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; First Edition edition (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401303226
• ISBN-13: 978-1401303228
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #276,485 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope's Boy is Haunting and Unforgettable, February 5, 2008

By	Michael S. Gordon (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was deeply moved by "Hope's Boy," Andrew Bridge's haunting elegy of a childhood that seemed to be lost forever when the author, at age 7, became a ward of the State after being taken from the arms of his young mother on a street corner in North Hollywood, California. Mr. Bridge's unsparing chronicle of his experiences on the front lines of our nation's foster care system -- including his time in a facility that seemed more like a prison camp, and his rearing by a sadistic foster mother, who herself was a prison camp survivor -- opened my eyes more widely to the system's endemic problems than any piece of investigative journalism on the subject ever could. But, at its core, Mr. Bridge's book is a heartbreaking, unforgettable love story about a mother and her son. Even though Mr. Bridge's mother, Hope, appears intermittently throughout his memoir, I felt her presence, even in her absence, on every single page of his book. I don't know that I've ever read anything more powerful about love and loss than Mr. Bridge's searing prose about his mother's embrace as she struggled to hold onto him when he was being pried from her arms. And ultimately, I was inspired by how Hope's love gave the boy, Andy, the strength to pursue, and, ultimately, achieve his goals. The adult Andrew has given a proud, defiant voice to the boy and his mother. I, for one, am glad to have heard them and hope that many others will too.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Devastating and Unforgettable, February 5, 2008

By	James Augustine "Jim Augustine" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Some families cannot be saved and their children cannot be return. Yet, even then, their love for each other must be worth something."
-- Andrew Bridge, Hope's Boy

This is a brave memoir about our nation's horribly broken foster care system, that all too often fails our children and families who are in most need and who are most vulnerable. With a steady and elegant voice, Bridge describes a mother who loved him desperately, and in the end, did more than most would ever ask of themselves, all the while savaged by mental illness. With tenderness, he describes how love can exist alongside failure and how a mother can ultimately "love a child more than she can care for him." The story is profoundly inspirational, told without a trace of bitterness - and clearly required tremendous courage to write.

Bridge went on to Wesleyan University, graduated from Harvard Law School, then devoted his life to the children he remembered -- children with broken lives who still wait for something far better than we give them.

An excellent read - an important one, too.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and heartwrenching, March 14, 2008

By	Karen Lausa (Littleton, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book held my interest to the very last page, but only when I read the epilogue did I shed a few tears of rage.
All the loneliness, the cruelty and chronic absence of nurturing and support in Andrew Bridge's life did not fill me with despair as much as the description of his fight as an adult, and an accomplished lawyer, to fight back against the very system that held him in bondage for his entire adolescence.
As a former court appointed special advocate in Colorado (CASA), and now a legal assistant for a Guardian ad litem specializing in family and juvenile law, I see on a daily basis how crippled and inadequate are our bureacracies in regard to foster care and all the children held in its limbo.
The courts are crowded, there aren't enough good homes, and the cases just keep coming...
I know from firsthand experience that children long for their parents, even when neglect feels like the norm and things at home are substandard.The system too often removes the kids, lets them languish too long in foster placements, and fails to provide appropriate support to the parents. ( An eight week class for meth addiction, or a six week workshop to end a life's cycle of domestic violence, etc.) We put band-aids on these families and heal very few of them. Emancipation at 18 is a frightening step for kids who have never had what the average child needs and has provided for him until the age of 26. Andrew Bridge was a victim of our inadequate system, but survived to become a voice to reckon with. His is a story that should not have happened, but the world is better for his courage and honesty in writing this book.
I will allow Andrew Bridge's words to inform my approach to working with the foster kids in Colorado.I also know now that to mention an absent parent's love and struggles should not be a taboo.It might be the very thing that is missing, regardless of the outcome for a family. Thank you, Andrew Bridge.