Foster Care Odyssey: A Black Girl's Story

Left as an infant with Catholic Charities in 1950s Buffalo, N.Y., Theresa Cameron was doomed to spend her childhood in foster homes because her mother never signed the final adoption papers. ""Very little has been written to convey what children experience and how they feel living among strangers,"" notes Cameron, now a Harvard-trained urban planner and designer, in her introduction to Foster Care Odyssey: A Black Girl's Story and even less about that of black children. Her ability to clearheadedly evaluate the morass of negative feelings without lapsing into sentimentality is one of the most affecting aspects of this memoir, which covers 19 years in foster care.