New York, NY: Random House (May 4, 2021)

Hardback.

New in dust jacket.

The moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn—about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love and protect people beyond our immediate kin.

May you always feel at home.

After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system’s goal is reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their family—even if it means most likely having to give them back. After years of starts and stops, and endless navigation of the complexities and injustices of the foster care system, a phone call finally comes: a three-day old baby girl, named Coco, in immediate need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home.

“You were never ours,” Sarah tells Coco, “yet we belong to each other.”

A love letter to Coco, and to the countless children like her, Stranger Care chronicles Sarah’s discovery of what it means to mother—in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but the birth mother who loves her, too. Ultimately, Coco’s story reminds us that we depend on family, and that family can take different forms. With “fearless, stirring, rhythmic” (Nick Flynn) prose, Sentilles lays bare an intimate, powerful story, with universal concerns: How can we care for and protect each other? How do we ensure a more hopeful future for life on this planet? And if we’re all related—tree, bird, star, person—how might we better live?