Someone Has Led This Child to Believe - by Regina Louise (Paperback)

About the Book

The follow-up to Regina Louise's acclaimed debut memoir, Somebody's Someone (2003), about growing up in the foster-care system.

Book Synopsis

"Revealing and much needed." --Booklist

In this unflinching, unforgettable memoir, Regina Louise tells the true story of overcoming neglect in the US foster-care system. Drawing on her experience as one of society's abandoned children, she tells how she emerged from the cruel, unjust system, not only to survive, but to flourish.

After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved. After Kerr tries unsuccessfully to adopt Louise, the two are ripped apart--seemingly forever--and Louise continues her passage through the cold cinder-block landscape of a broken system, enduring solitary confinement, overmedication, and the actions of adults who seem hell-bent on convincing her that she deserves nothing, that she is nothing. But instead of losing her will to thrive, Louise remains determined to achieve her dream of a higher education. After she ages out of the system, Louise is thrown into adulthood and, haunted by her trauma, struggles to finish school, build a career, and develop relationships. As she puts it, it felt impossible "to understand how to be in the world."

Eventually, Louise learns how to confront her past and reflect on her traumas. She starts writing, quite literally, a new future for herself, a new way to be. Louise weaves together raw, sometimes fragmented memories, excerpts from real documents from her case file, and elegant reflections to tell the story of her painful upbringing and what came after. The result is a rich, engrossing account of one abandoned girl's efforts to find her place in the world, people to love, and people to love her back.

Review Quotes

Praise for Regina Louise's Someone Has Led This Child to Believe:

"Revealing and much needed." --Booklist

"Her story had a distinctly raw edge to it, as she chronicled . . . how she was deemed mentally disturbed and incorrigible for wanting what so many children from intact families took for granted, and how she triumphed over unbelievable odds." --Kirkus Reviews

"There's pain and beauty in Louise's vulnerability and her willingness to evict personal experience from the singular realm of self and take it into the world." --Foreword Reviews

There is no other memoir like Regina Louise's memoir. Louise has an unerring instinct to launch daggers of beauty and terror into readers' hearts, and then dazzle us with unique imagery and a voice that is unforgettable. She gives us the story of a foster girl who saw shovel-whipping rattlesnakes, copper-penny curls, a girl who could not be broken, who kept her stories intact and amazing." --Susan Straight, author, Highwire Moon

"Regina Louise has written before about the devastating loneliness and cycle of abuse faced by foster children, but this memoir--again in her inimitable, unbreakable voice--focuses instead on the impact of love, the simple generosity of spirit that can transform the life of a lost and abandoned child." --Tom Lutz, editor in chief, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Regina Louise's childhood ordeal and quest to find true family are enthralling and ultimately triumphant. I cheered her every step of the way." --Julia Scheeres, New York Times bestselling author, Jesus Land

"Regina Louise's voice has the kind of slow, melodious rhythm that feels very classic and familiar (shades of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) but made fresh by the spunk and fire of the young Regina, and the accepting-but-still-hurting sting of her current self. It's just lovely." --Lilly Dancyger, deputy editor, Narratively

"In language that ranges from raw and visceral to elegant and poetic, Louise captures it all, from the sublime to the grotesque." --Jane Anne Staw, author, Small: The Little We Need for Happiness and Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer's Block

"Regina's writing is a triumph. Her life is a miracle." --Andrea Buchanan, editor, Note to Self

"An abandoned child whose odyssey through bleak institutions and unloving foster homes resolves not in self-destruction but in the discovery of her magnificent, almost magical, voice." --Mike Davis, author, Planet of Slums and City of Quartz

Praise for Regina Louise's Somebody's Someone:

"An amazingly powerful and unforgettable literary debut." --Sapphire, author of Push

"In a voice as textured as a little girl's cotton summer dress, Regina Louise enthralls you. This well-crafted memoir of longing reminds you of what it means to have a place of your own-especially a place inside yourself." --Mitchael Datcher, author of New York Times bestseller Raising Fences

"This is a harsh, often brutal, but always compelling memoir, and its very existence is proof of the author's personal triumph in the face of enormous odds. " --Booklist

"Its poignancy lies in being a true story. . . this rare look into the inner world of an unwanted child will enlighten readers concerned with the fate of at-risk children." --Publishers Weekly

"Debut memoirist Louise eloquently indicts a family and community that abused and neglected her. . . . A searing visit to a Dickensian world of cruelty and indifference to children." --Kirkus Reviews

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About the Author

REGINA LOUISE is the author of Somebody's Someone, which chronicles her journey through foster care. The one-woman stage adaptation of the book debuted at the Sacramento Theatre Company and was nominated for two NAACP Theatre Awards. Her story, which is in film production, has been featured on All Things Considered, the BBC, and The Early Show, among others. Louise is a leadership coach in human services, a Hoffman Process teaching candidate, and the winner of an Adoption Excellence Award from the Administration for Children and Families. She is also a trauma-informed trainer who advocates on behalf of foster youth and their emotional permanency. She lives in Northern California.