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.
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