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.
Harrowing ... Powerful ... A wrenching book ... Asgarian spent nearly five years reporting this book, finding people to interview and digging through official records ... Even if you’re still skeptical of her proposed solutions, Asgarian gives you plenty to think about.
[Asgarian's] bracing gut punch of a book, We Were Once a Family, is a provocative mix of immersive narrative journalism, rigorous social policy analysis and proud advocacy. It pulls back the focus from the horrific crash to investigate, thoroughly and intimately, why these six children were sent out of Texas in the first place ... Asgarian begins with a powerfully rendered narrative of how the second set of three children the Harts adopted — Ciera, Devonte and Jeremiah — were caught up in the wheels of a Texas family court ... The children are killed with more than 100 pages left in the book. It is here that Asgarian fully steps into the narrative, developing deep personal ties with the children’s birth parents, their partners, their other children and their caseworkers, getting to understand the depths of their impossible life situations and the institutional neglect ... The most affecting story is of Dontay Davis, the brother left behind, first institutionalized and later incarcerated.
Moving and superbly reported ... Asgarian’s rendering of this broad historical context is at times rushed or disorganized, but it nonetheless provides a crucial framework for one of the book’s most compelling threads: its portrait of Dontay Davis ... Patient, compassionate.
