Abrams Press
Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care
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Finalist for the 2025 National Book Awards in Nonfiction
"An immersive, devastating look at foster children's lives." (Seattle Times)
A compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system, told through the stories of six former foster youth. This powerful narrative nonfiction book delves into the systemic failures that lead many foster children into the criminal justice system, highlighting the urgent need for reform.
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in child welfare, social justice, and the transformative power of the best narrative nonfiction.
In Wards of the State, award-winning journalist Claudia Rowe's storytelling is both vivid and unflinching, offering readers a deep understanding of the foster care-to-prison pipeline. Through interviews with psychologists, advocates, judges, and the former foster children themselves, Rowe paints a heartbreaking picture of the lives shaped by this broken system.
By the time Maryanne was 16 years old, she had been arrested for murder. In and out of foster and adoptive homes since age 10, she'd run away, been trafficked and assaulted, and finally pointed a gun at a man and pulled the trigger. She fled, but it didn't take long for the police to catch up with her.
In court, the defense blamed neither traffickers, nor Maryanne, but Washington state itself--or rather, its foster care system, which parents thousands of children every year. The courts didn't listen to that argument, but award-winning journalist Claudia Rowe did.
Washington state isn't alone. Each year, hundreds of thousands of children grow up in America's $30 billion foster care system, only to leave and enter its prisons, where a quarter of all inmates are former foster youth.
Weaving Maryanne's story with those of five other foster kids across the country--including an 18-year-old sleeping on the New York City subways; a dropout turned graduate student; and a foster child who is now a policy advisor to the White House--Rowe paints a visceral survival narrative showing exactly where, when, and how the system channels children into locked cells.
Rowe brings her extensive experience and investigative prowess to this eye-opening work. With a career spanning over 25 years, Rowe has written for publications such as The New York Times and Mother Jones, and her reporting has influenced policy changes in Washington State. Her previous book, The Spider and the Fly, was a gripping true-crime memoir that showcased her ability to blend personal narrative with broader social issues.
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Book Details
ISBN:
9781419763151
EAN:
9781419763151
Binding:
Hardcover
Pages:
256
Authors:
Claudia Rowe
Publisher:
Abrams Press
Published Date: 2025-20-05
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Wards of the State ~ American Foster Careby Claudia Rowe.When there is a problem, folks are known to say, "Where do we go from here?”For decades, both the foster care and the criminal legal systems have been intertwined and systemically connected in a world of chaos, which they both have a hand in creating. As a former 27-year cop who was raised in a home with foster care children, I am not exactly Stevie Wonder when it comes to the problems that both of these entities have created and continue to marinate in. However, this amazing book, Wards of the State by Claudia Rowe, opened my eyes in ways I never thought possible, concerning situations that I had never even imagined.Please don't think that because you or someone you know has never been in the foster care system, that you don't have any skin in the game, because you do. Annually, over 670,000 children experience foster care, and approximately 400,000 children are in foster care in the United States at any given time.If you care about homelessness in this country, if you are concerned about our youth being vastly under educated, if you are concerned about sex trafficking of our youth, then you should, then you NEED to read this book, as it affects not only an enormous amount of families, but neighborhoods, our education system, and the jailed population.Don't just shake your head, don't just talk about it, be about it! Claudia Rowe knows where the systems have failed, how they might be improved, and what gives her hope.There is an old saying that youth is wasted on the young. Well, because of the intersection of the failings of the foster care and criminal legal systems, multitudes of victims are never given the opportunity to be young. In reality, they are born then pushed into a difficult adult world that you won't believe until you read this book.Claudia Rowe is the Truth.
Wards of the State convincingly condemns a foster care system that costs taxpayers a fortune while failing those it’s supposed to help, leaving thousands of them addicted, homeless, or behind bars. But the book is more than a policy study. Through a remarkable act of narrative alchemy Claudia Rowe enables her readers to enter into the lives of men and women broken by the system and to understand its cruelty viscerally, in a way that calls out for change.
This is a great book that was recently published about the foster care system in America. It is well worth the time to read that not only explores the challenges, successes and failures of the system but also shares stories about some incredible people who have grown up in foster care. There is so much work needed to reform the foster care system to shift its focus from housing to healing, but educating people with great books like this is a beginning.
I truly believe this book should be required reading by every citizen in the US - starting with Washington State - so that those of us who haven't experienced the foster care system first-hand, can see what it is doing to too many of our children. Claudia Rowe's writing is compelling, her story telling engaging. This is NOT an easy read emotionally - but it is a NEEDED READ in order for each of us to stop fooling ourselves that children in foster care are someone else's responsibility. We all need to invest ourselves in changing this damaging system so that fewer children end up incarcerated, homeless, drug/alcohol addicted or the victim of traffickers or the countless other foster care to tragic outcomes that are taking place each and every day for children under the "care" of the state. I personally think that this should be on every book club's reading list...it's that good and it's that important.
This book should be read by every criminal defense attorney and Mitigation Expert in the USA. Claudia Rowe shows in glaring terms the travesties we put on those who need just the opposite. She tells the stories of six kids and along with the story teaches the lessons. We do every wrong thing we can. There is a saying among prisoners that "Hurt People Hurt People" and this book shows why.
