We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
"A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book." --Robert Kolker, The Washington Post
"[A] moving and superbly reported book." --Jessica Winter, The New Yorker "A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book." --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children--and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children. Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian's We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children's birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts' adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian's reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America's most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
Reviewed by TyaNeka Edwards
🖊️ Whew…this book right here has me all in my feelings. I hope you are joining us on April 9th to discuss it. Here’s my review in the meantime:
We Were Once a Family is both well written and well researched. Roxanna Asgarian told this story with such care and compassion that even thought it was a heavy subject matter, it was an easy read. I’m so glad that she took the time to give us the beginning of the story, while so many reports and articles focused on the end of the story. She went above and beyond her role as a journalist and gave a voice to the birth families of the adopted children, particularly the mothers.
I was intrigued about the story from the first time I heard it and even more so when I learned that one of the children was from the viral photo of a crying Black boy hugging a white cop in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest. Ultimately this book left me sad and anger and a part of me will always wonder if Ye made it back home to his family.
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