Born into a household marred by abuse and neglect, you could say that author Cris Beam began work on her most recent book, To The End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care on the day she left her home as a teenager, staggered at having received no support from Child Protective Services.
Reading from the preface of To The End Of June, Cris related that fraught childhood to HENRY in the downtown apartment she shares her partner, two dogs, and bookcases that reach the living room’s twenty foot ceilings. Cris’s warmth and her prolific literary output–her own novels and memoir are discreetly tucked towards the upper echelons of the shelves–belie the upbringing she described and overcame.
And yet, as To The End of June communicates, a youth like Cris’ is all too common in America; the book posits penetrating criticisms of the child welfare system. Cris is more than an armchair commentator, however. When she was just 28 she fostered her daughter Christina, then a 17-year-old threatened with sleeping in a juvenile detention center simply because there was not a single available bed in the Los Angeles child welfare apparatus.
As a mother, writer, and as a social analyst, Cris has fully devoted herself to fixing a broken system, and To The End of June, out now through Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, is sure to galvanize change.
Edited by Justin Goncalves
Director: Phil Primason; Sound: Jacob Blumberg; Cinematography: Ryan Nethery, Matt Porter
I selected “To The End of June” to read for a book report assignment in my Child Maltreatment social work class and was extremely glad that I did. The book is written in a way that the kids and foster parents struggling with the system and their own personal demons, jump off the pages and into your heart. When I read the epilogue, I was hoping that Chris would provide more information on what happened to all of the girls (is Tonya still in college? Did Dominique end up leaving her uncaring foster mother and if so, where is she now?). But I realize, more than anything, it’s the compelling and fluid writing of the author that makes you want to stay connected to the vulnerable lives she so beautifully exposes in her book. As Chris so perfectly illustrates, the problem with the child welfare system both in America and Canada, where I reside, is one that can not be fixed with a bullet, but “To the End of June” helps to show where the problems lie.
Excellent book and highly recommend this book as reading to both current and future social worker in North America..