The year is 1954. Abandoned by her teenage mother, a baby girl is left in the care of a charity in Buffalo, New York.

The baby is black in a city and at a time in which blacks and whites have little to do with one another; the charity is an overwhelmingly white organization. Little Theresa Cameron is placed into this racially divided world.

In this shattering account of her eighteen years as a “ward of the state,” Cameron takes us inside the life of a foster child. She shares with us her heartbreaking struggle to survive in a foster-care system where children’s welfare often seemed the lowest priority.

Read the first chapter here.