This Child of Mine: A Therapist's Journey

No one will remain unmoved by psychotherapist Martha Wakenshaw's This Child of Mine: A Therapist's Journey, an account of extremely disadvantaged children who have been failed by their parents, the child welfare system or both. In careful, heartrending descriptions, Wakenshaw recounts scenarios like a possibly schizophrenic four-year-old's endless play enactments of saving children in distress, and indicts Washington State's welfare system for simplistic treatment of abuse cases. Despite some passages about her own recovery from childhood traumas that are tinged with self-indulgence, social workers will find this sad, at times lovely book full of insight.