She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them.

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl…as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies. At first her sole aim is to get out alive–until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess’s next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. A self-proclaimed “homicidal adventurer,” Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with “intensity.” Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.Ĭhyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend’s family. With “fearless, stirring, rhythmic” (Nick Flynn) prose, Sentilles lays bare an intimate, powerful story, with universal concerns: How can we care for and protect each other? How do we ensure a more hopeful future for life on this planet? And if we’re all related–tree, bird, star, person–how might we better live?

Ultimately, Coco’s story reminds us that we depend on family, and that family can take different forms. “You were never ours,” Sarah tells Coco, “yet we belong to each other.”Ī love letter to Coco, and to the countless children like her, Stranger Care chronicles Sarah’s discovery of what it means to mother–in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but the birth mother who loves her, too. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home. After years of starts and stops, and endless navigation of the complexities and injustices of the foster care system, a phone call finally comes: a three-day old baby girl, named Coco, in immediate need of a foster family. Despite knowing that the system’s goal is reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their family–even if it means most likely having to give them back. After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, decide to adopt via the foster care system.

Looking for alaska by john green pdf