Nobody's Daughter: My Quest for a Family

Her mother left eight-year-old Jeanette locked behind bars at Chicago's Arthur J. Audy Home. Family life ceased. She became a ward of the state. At sixteen she left foster care to live as an adult on her own, but her life's trajectory changed when she became a mother at nineteen, left with a two-week-old baby and nine dollars to her name. Despite a lack of support or direction, she was driven to be the best mother she could and make a stable family life for her daughter, which she was denied.

From institutional living and even homelessness to being a homeowner; from high school drop-out to teaching a college class; from no degrees to being a professional customer support representative, a technical corporate trainer, a sales rep. and an entrepreneur: Jan was motivated to succeed. This is the saga of how one woman, one ward of the state, beat the odds.