Counting Down: A Memoir of Foster Parenting and Beyond

Deborah Gold and her husband foster parented a traumatized birth family for fifteen years, facing challenges and uncertainties along the way. Counting Down is a memoir that offers a foster parent's perspective, shedding light on the complexities of the system and the resilience of the birth family. It features social workers, birth mothers, and foster parents, highlighting the love, loss, and quality hand-me-downs that unite them. Gold's book challenges common assumptions and provides a hopeful look at an often-portrayed experience as bleak.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 26 February 2018
Publisher: Ohio University Press

Deborah Gold and her husband embarked on a journey of foster parenting in their rural mountain community, embarking on a fifteen-year roller-coaster ride with a traumatized yet resilient birth family. They fell in love with Michael, a toddler when he came to them, but faced the reality that he could leave their lives at any time. In her memoir, Counting Down, Gold shares the story of forging a family within a confounding system, featuring social workers, birth mothers, and a father parenting from prison. She also introduces readers to a remarkable fellowship of Appalachian foster parents, united by love, loss, and quality hand-me-downs. Gold's memoir is one of the few books to offer a foster parent's perspective, providing a frank and hopeful look at an experience often portrayed as bleak.

Weight: 428g
Dimension: 148 x 224 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780821422960