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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 2015)
Street Roots • Nov. 13-19, 2015 Book Review foster care system is a necessity, but one That sometimes manifests deep and regrettable flaws. Supreme amoiig such flaws are traumatic injuries sustained by innocent kids, or worse, the death of a child placed in what is supposed to be a protective environment A native boy, Anthony Little Eagle, was seven years of age. Anthony had been removed from his hard-drinking parents after police found them passed out and an uncle “screaming and waving a gun around.” Young social worker Lynn Winters, under Sylvia’s supervision^ had been responsible for placing the child in the licensed foster home of Paul and Linda Mellon. Usually efforts are made to place Indian children with Native American families, but it was late on a Friday afternoon. The Mellons, a BY JOE MARTIN white couple, were available. The alternative C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R was to put the little guy in the juvenile ixty-year-old Sylvia Jensen is a veteran detention system where mostly tough social worker and supervisor of a teenagers hided their time. Lynn wanted to avoid that. crucial program responsible for the placement of vulnerable children in safe and Anthony had been in foster care for only appropriate foster homes. A white single three days when he fell through a railing to woman, Sylvia has long had a deep interest his death, an apparent accident. Lynn and in Native American life and culture. Though Sylvia are devastated. Sylvia pondered: “The an, outsider, she participated in the early boy had died under my watch. That made days of the American Indian Movement me responsible. What happened was my “cooking and doing the dishes while the fault. I had failed to protect him.” The strain protesters planned their strategy, sleeping and uncertain ramifications of this tragedy with a couple of them.” Her office is has shaken Sylvia’s hard-won sobriety. In decorated with Indian art and artifacts along her younger days she had become immersed in a world of ample booze and random sex. with a print by the famous photographer Edward Curtis titled “Mohave Waterj With onerous guilt and the hàunting image Carrier.” of a little child dead she could easily relapse. There was oblivion in alcohol. While driving In June of 2005, Sylvia is plunged into a she spotted a bar: “It would be so eagy. to go heartrending case of afoster child’s death. inside, erase everything from my mind, “At the Center” is the second novel by obliterate my loneliness by sharing Seattle resident Dorothy Van Soest. A intimacies with people I didn’t know, have prolific authpr of books and nonfiction drunken sex with whoever I wanted or articles, Van Soest is the former dean of the whoever was available. But then I University of Washington School of Social remembered what it was like to wake up in Work. In this current mystery she explores the arms of a stranger, my loneliness worse the personal and systemic vicissitudes and smothered with shame.” She drove on. inherent in the network of foster care. In the immediate wake of the tragedy, Problems that permeate contemporary Sylvia is visited by no-nonsense investigative society bring psychological misery and reporter J.B. Harrell. He has proven his physical danger to unfortunate children mettle with penetrating exposés about the exposed to the egregious carelessness and illegal drug trade and fraud in the banking violence of parents and other adults. The Fostering a mystery Seattle writer Dorothy Van Soest’s n ew book explores the responsibilities and challenges o f the foster care system , ;...i g At The * Center ôorotftÿ Van Soest At The Center by Dorothy Van Soest B Page industry. Harrell is of Native American heritage but sports no romantic attachment to his Indian roots. “In his perfectly tailored three-piece gray suit with a blue and maroon striped tie, and his chiseled cheekbones set off by an ,expensive salon hairstyle, he looked more like a corporate business executive than a journalist.” He sits and gives a quick survey of the items that festoon Sylvia’s office. She senses that Harrell thinks she must be a typical bleeding heart: “Someone not to be trusted.” He begins grilling Sylvia about the boy’s death. She had been admonished by her organization’s attorney “not to say anything that, could be misinterpreted or that might reflect negatively on our agency.” HarrelLis relentless and suggests that Anthony may have been murdered. He stuns Sylvia by revealing information unknown to her that a little girl had been injured five years earlier in the Mellon home. At that time Sylvia was in rehab for alcoholism- Their meeting ends and Sylvia is determined to research Anthony’s case. Her own suspicions are stoked when she is told that she will not be able to access the contents of the case file. This initiates an unlikely alliance with Harrell as they work together to reveal the truth. As , they unravel a skein of alarming facts, they come face-to-face with something truly monstrous. Van Soest limns a convincing portrait 6f the vagaries of large bureaucracies and the individuals in those systems given the responsibility to address Society’s ills. Sometimes lamentable incidents of malfeasance and, neglect occur.The sheep size of bureaucratic systems can obscure regrettable realities that only persistent arid courageous investigation can bring to light. Weaving throughout the sad tale of Anthony Little Eagle is a parallel story set in the 1970s involving another Indian boy. “At the Center” is a taut mystery that should have the reader cheering for the unlikely pairing of Sylvia and J.B. in their determined search for justice, Reprinted from Street Roots’ sister paper Real Change News, Seattle, Wash. Better health Matching Gift Challenge: All through November & December your gift is matched 50 t for every dollar, plus an additional $1-for-$1 match for all new donors! 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