Hope's Boy

by Andrew Bridge

Book Overview

From the moment he was born, Andrew Bridge and his mother Hope shared a love so deep that it felt like nothing else mattered. Trapped in desperate poverty and confronted with unthinkable tragedies, all Andrew ever wanted was to be with his mom. But as her mental health steadily declined, and with no one else left to care for him, authorities arrived and tore Andrew from his screaming mother's arms. In that moment, the life he knew came crashing down...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401303226
• ISBN13: 9781401303228
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Hopes boy

I love this book! it was for a summer reading I had to do and I bought more than just one incase I didn't like it. It came in amount of time and in good shape!

Disturbing and heartwrenching

This book held my interest to the very last page, but only when I read the epilogue did I shed a few tears of rage. All the loneliness, the cruelty and chronic absence of nurturing and support in Andrew Bridge's life did not fill me with despair as much as the description of his fight as an adult, and an accomplished lawyer, to fight back against the very system that held him in bondage for his entire adolescence. As a former court appointed special advocate in Colorado (CASA), and now a legal assistant for a Guardian ad litem specializing in family and juvenile law, I see on a daily basis how crippled and inadequate are our bureacracies in regard to foster care and all the children held in its limbo. The courts are crowded, there aren't enough good homes, and the cases just keep coming... I know from firsthand experience that children long for their parents, even when neglect feels like the norm and things at home are substandard.The system too often removes the kids, lets them languish too long in foster placements, and fails to provide appropriate support to the parents. ( An eight week class for meth addiction, or a six week workshop to end a life's cycle of domestic violence, etc.) We put band-aids on these families and heal very few of them. Emancipation at 18 is a frightening step for kids who have never had what the average child needs and has provided for him until the age of 26. Andrew Bridge was a victim of our inadequate system, but survived to become a voice to reckon with. His is a story that should not have happened, but the world is better for his courage and honesty in writing this book. I will allow Andrew Bridge's words to inform my approach to working with the foster kids in Colorado.I also know now that to mention an absent parent's love and struggles should not be a taboo.It might be the very thing that is missing, regardless of the outcome for a family. Thank you, Andrew Bridge.

A Young Man's Courage

Andy Bridge's likeable childhood photo peers out from his bookjacket, but his eyes betray his face. Just slightly though. He has been trained to smile for the camera. It's a heartbreaking photograph and it drew me to the rack upon which the book sat. I know that look. Eager to please, yet mindful of the consequence of caring. Like a scene from a macabre Tennessee Williams play, Andy is ripped from his over-the-edge mother when she has one too many public meltdowns. "Hope's Boy" is whisked away from the scene. And like one of Williams' characters, from now on Andy's survival will depend upon the kindness of strangers. That's what kids learn when the bottom falls out. Some folks will like you, but most won't. Kids remember all the stings. And some of the encouragement. You learn to become an actor, to do what you're told, You've been broken young, by people who aren't your parents. It's just easier to go along to get along. In his probing memoir, Andy Bridges shows us in graphic detail exactly how good an actor he can be. And it is to his credit, as this quality keeps him tied to one family, the Leonards, for most of his remaining childhood. He learns that Mrs. Leonard, a Nazi survivor, has mood swings and he needs to stay out of her way. He overhears her gossiping with neighbors about his plight and those of the other foster children that pass through the Leonard's household. He sees there's a revolving door. There's no security here. But he promises to do better. Bridges' writing is candid, honest, self-effacing . . . and ultimately surprising. The touchstone of the story is young Jason, another foster child. This child's transformation in the household is portrayed in such a heartbreaking fashion that I found myself having to put the book down at times. It is obvious that the boy had a tremendous effect on Andy. His book is a tribute to Jason. I say the book is ultimately suprising because I didn't see the personal transformation Andy went through coming. I have seen this in other memoirs. The subject doesn't want to seem to be bragging perhaps. (Or could the security of his foster home have had something to do with it?) But all of a sudden this timid, introverted outcast is running for school body president, getting a scholarship to Wesleyan, wait! Now he's a champion debater. When did all this happen? Well, I'm glad it did, because Andrew Bridge, great name by the way, has become a "bridge" to other kids who, through no fault of their own, are cast into a bureaucratic system that strips them of their remaining dignity at just the moment they're most vulnerable. He bookends his memoir with an example of how he has put what he learned as an adult into action. I know a couple of people who were in the foster system in Los Angeles in the '70's. I've heard horror stories of all kinds of abuse. Bridge relates some of the tragedies pertaining to the arrival of another child into the Leonard household

A Beautifully Written Deeply Moving True Story

Hope's son is a beautifully written deeply moving true story that violates conventional wisdom about what is in a child's best interest and affirms the redemptive power of education. Hope loves her son and wants to raise him herself; however, poverty and mental instability undermine her ability to do so. Andrew Bridge, her son, was removed from his mother and placed in the foster care--a system that neither provided more opportunity nor a better life. The intact family he was eventually placed with was in no way an adequate substitute for his mother. Andrew is one of the lucky ones. Academic achievement led to scholarships for college and law school, giving him the skills to fight for foster children and to challenge assumptions about where society's resources are best used--to build a better foster care system or to help parents raise their children. This is a book that speaks both to your emotions and your intellect and does so with passion, wit and first hand experience.

Hope's Boy is Haunting and Unforgettable

I was deeply moved by "Hope's Boy," Andrew Bridge's haunting elegy of a childhood that seemed to be lost forever when the author, at age 7, became a ward of the State after being taken from the arms of his young mother on a street corner in North Hollywood, California. Mr. Bridge's unsparing chronicle of his experiences on the front lines of our nation's foster care system -- including his time in a facility that seemed more like a prison camp, and his rearing by a sadistic foster mother, who herself was a prison camp survivor -- opened my eyes more widely to the system's endemic problems than any piece of investigative journalism on the subject ever could. But, at its core, Mr. Bridge's book is a heartbreaking, unforgettable love story about a mother and her son. Even though Mr. Bridge's mother, Hope, appears intermittently throughout his memoir, I felt her presence, even in her absence, on every single page of his book. I don't know that I've ever read anything more powerful about love and loss than Mr. Bridge's searing prose about his mother's embrace as she struggled to hold onto him when he was being pried from her arms. And ultimately, I was inspired by how Hope's love gave the boy, Andy, the strength to pursue, and, ultimately, achieve his goals. The adult Andrew has given a proud, defiant voice to the boy and his mother. I, for one, am glad to have heard them and hope that many others will too.

Devastating and Unforgettable

"Some families cannot be saved and their children cannot be return. Yet, even then, their love for each other must be worth something." -- Andrew Bridge, Hope's Boy This is a brave memoir about our nation's horribly broken foster care system, that all too often fails our children and families who are in most need and who are most vulnerable. With a steady and elegant voice, Bridge describes a mother who loved him desperately, and in the end, did more than most would ever ask of themselves, all the while savaged by mental illness. With tenderness, he describes how love can exist alongside failure and how a mother can ultimately "love a child more than she can care for him." The story is profoundly inspirational, told without a trace of bitterness - and clearly required tremendous courage to write. Bridge went on to Wesleyan University, graduated from Harvard Law School, then devoted his life to the children he remembered -- children with broken lives who still wait for something far better than we give them. An excellent read - an important one, too.