BookLife Review: A Place Called Home-A Memoir by David Ambroz

Foster care, child neglect, memoir, New York City, foster parents, resilience

Buckle up. Author David Ambroz @hjdambroz shares a gut-wrenching and heart-breaking call-to-action memoir about his childhood as a #homeless #unhoused child roaming #NewYorkCity with his #mentallyill single mother and two siblings. The book opens with hungry five-year old David trailing his 6 and 8 year old siblings and their mom on a cold December night in Manhattan as darkness falls and the family searches for a warm place to spend the night. In and mostly out of school, the children are at the mercy of their unwell mother as they wander between NYC, Albany, Boston and many points between, bouncing from temporary shelter to short lived public housing to the streets and more shelters. The neglect and abuse and hunger of the siblings goes largely unnoticed or ignored by schools, teachers and social workers. Eventually the siblings end up in a series of #fostercare homes, where David is separated from his two siblings and subjected to more abuse and mistreatment, again unnoticed and unassisted by the system. There are occasional respites and kindnesses but David's life is precarious at best. As a narrative, #aplacecalledhome is gripping. There are moments when Ambroz exits memoir mode and becomes an advocate and teacher, decrying the shortfalls of the child protection and foster care systems (his eventual life's work). While understandable and informative, these segments detract from the impact of the memoir as story and perhaps would be better presented as an Epilogue or Afterword. Ultimately, there is much each of us can do, large and small, to care for the forgotten children suffering through homelessness, hunger and poor foster care. @booktokbookclub #booktok #fosteryouth @asenseofhomeorg