Three Little Words: A Memoir (review)

Ashley Rhodes was, with her younger half-brother, removed from her mother's home by Florida's Department of Children's Services when she was three, and she spent the subsequent nine years bouncing from foster home to foster home to relative to institution and around again. Trying to stay afloat amid occasional longed-for visits from her unreliable mother, a blend of irritation with and need for her younger brother, a sustained stay in an abusive foster home, and a high-speed revolving door of case workers and other officials, she finally acquired a champion in her court-appointed advocate and eventually found an adoptive home with the Courter family. Though settling into a new family wasn't easy, Ashley ultimately discovered security with the Courters, and she has since become an advocate for children in care. This is a sobering chronicle, and Rhodes-Courter is candid about her own behaviors and attitudes as well as her experiences, never overdramatizing herself as a wounded innocent, just a real kid who's understandably troubled by her experiences. The indictment of the children's services agencies, especially Florida's, is clear and well made, with sheer bureaucratic carelessness the source of much of the author's lost and misplaced childhood, and the book gains considerable energy at the end when Rhodes-Courter participates in a lawsuit against Florida for their placement of children in an obviously abusive foster home. Most of the book, however, is raw and unshaped, feeling like a draft for a memoir rather than a finished product; references to people and events appear randomly and lack explanation, emotional context is often absent, and follow-through on issues raised is inconsistent. It's a moving account nonetheless, and it'll be an easy sell to readers fascinated by a real-life counterpart to Giff's Pictures of Hollis Woods (BCCB 12/02).