Catch Me Before I Fall

Childs, born Clare Malone, was dropped into the world on the couch of her mother's dirty house in Liverpool in 1954. In this heart-wrenching read, Childs tells of growing up as a lone mixed-race child in an all-white area, where she is the shamefully visible product of her dissolute mother's extramarital trysts. Filthy and neglected, she and her siblings scrape by with stolen bread and lice-filled heads until Childs is nine and they are removed from her mother's custody into an orphanage, run by punishing nuns. Childs rebelliously adapts to their vigilantly tough custody until she is discharged at the age of 15, unadopted and afraid. She is subsequently placed with foster parents found by her mother, with whom she has sporadic contact, and makes the first of her many lifetime name changes. After a period of success as a nanny and preschool teacher, she enters college at 30 and has a breakdown that sends her on an ugly carousel of self-mutilation and eating disorders. Somehow this horrible existence remains hopeful: her indomitable spirit is heartening, and the book is hard to put down. Vulnerable but without self-pity, Childs tells a story of survival that's a shot across the bow from the many unwanted children. (Oct.)