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Title details for We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian - Available

We Were Once a Family

A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

by Roxanna Asgarian
Suehyla El-Attar
Audiobook
3 of 3 copies available
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3 of 3 copies available

One of Literary Hub's most anticipated books of 2023
"Narrator Suehyla El-Attar gives an impassioned performance that enhances the touching, terrifying tale of social injustice and systemic failure. Her delivery is compelling and clear, evoking a captivating listening experience from this true-crime tragedy."- Library Journal
The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children—and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew very little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children—with fateful consequences.
In the manner of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and other classic works of investigative journalism, Roxanna Asgarian's We Were Once a Family is a revelation of vulnerable lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian became the first reporter to put the children's birth families at the center of the story. We follow the author as she runs up against the intransigence of a state agency that removes tens of thousands of kids from homes each year in the name of child welfare, while often failing to consider alternatives. Her reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as children of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America's most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    March 14, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781250883629
      • File size: 218020 KB
      • Duration: 07:34:12

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 9, 2023
      Journalist Asgarian debuts with a comprehensive and searing look at systemic issues within the foster care and adoption systems through the eyes of two Texas families whose Black and biracial children were removed from their homes, adopted, abused, and killed in a deliberate murder-suicide car crash by their white adoptive mothers in 2018. Over and over, Asgarian finds that wherever the children’s birth relatives “encountered resistance in the system,” the adoptive parents were given the benefit of the doubt, despite evidence of long-term abuse. Instead of focusing—as most contemporaneous news reports did—on the “dark psychological problems” of the adoptive married couple, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, Asgarian centers the birth families, interviewing the birth mothers whose parental rights were terminated and extended family members who had been seeking custody of the children, and describing the lingering trauma of the children’s surviving family, including the siblings who weren’t adopted. Emotional and frequently enraging, it adds up to a blistering indictment of a system where, in the words of one reform advocate, “we’ve lost key concepts like humanity, dignity. We’re prioritizing compliance and the needs of bureaucracy.” Throughout, Asgarian makes clear that the endemic failures that led to this shocking tragedy continue to affect countless families caught up in the child welfare system. Sensitive, impassioned, and eye-opening, this is a must-read.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from June 1, 2023

      Texas Tribune reporter Asgarian presents the results of her exhaustive five-year examination of the 2018 murder-suicide case of the Hart family. When Jennifer and Sarah Hart drove their SUV off a California cliff with their six adopted children inside, they initiated an investigation that revealed inhumane treatment, abuse, and other atrocities that had previously been shielded by the seemingly happy family. In this disturbing and detailed debut, Asgarian uncovers the racism, negligence, and corruption that culminated in incomprehensible heartache. From the birth families to bureaucracy, Asgarian's analysis of the trauma the Hart children endured is thorough and thought-provoking. Narrator Suehyla El-Attar gives an impassioned performance that enhances the touching, terrifying tale of social injustice and systemic failure. Her delivery is compelling and clear, evoking a captivating listening experience from this true-crime tragedy. VERDICT This audio will appeal to listeners seeking a harrowing, issue-oriented nonfiction work about family, foster care, and the faults and failings of both. Recommended for fans of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and similar steadfast investigative journalism.--Lauren Hackert

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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