cover image Temporary Child: A Foster Care Survivor's Story

Temporary Child: A Foster Care Survivor's Story

Edward J. Benzola. Real People Pub., $12.95 (126pp) ISBN 978-1-883359-02-7

On March 3, 1991, Eddie Benzola, who had been raised in a foster home, learned that he had two half-sisters and a half-brother born to his remarried natural father. Upon hearing this news, he contacted one of his sisters and began to piece together his origins and identity. Abandoned by his birth mother, Eddie grew up in the home of Henrietta Butler, a loving foster mother who constantly took in babies from the Child Welfare service until they could be matched with adoptive families. From childhood, Eddie seemed withdrawn. This was due, perhaps in part, to Butler's husband, a violent alcoholic, and to a series of attachments quickly made and then severed in the rapid turnover of other foster babies in the Butler home. In his research into his own life history, the author's contacts with the foster care bureaucracy led him to several conclusions regarding the need for greater supervision of the foster care system. While compelling as an account of the alienation that can result from a foster care childhood, Benzola's book is undermined by amateurish writing, scant insight and excessive introspection. Beach is a freelance writer. (Oct.)