"Saving Sarah Cain" with Elliott Gould, Lisa Pepper and Tess Harper

I must have passed this one by a hundred times in the library without picking it up. I put it in the "chick flick" category and ignored it. My loss, as I could have enjoyed this film a couple of years earlier.

Elliott Gould is the crusty, browbeaten editor of a newspaper in Oregon. His best columnist, Sarah Cain, played by Lisa Pepper, is having a writers block. Her columns have been reduced from real journalism to things like "6 Ways to Use Cheese." She is being outpaced by a younger and "foxier" reporter who has caught the eye of the editor. Things are looking down for Sarah until she receives a fateful phone call.

As a young girl, Sarah and her sister were close. They were more than that. They were one. They played at the shore and collected 10 perfect seashells each, vowing to look at them each day and pray for the other. They also promised never to leave one another. So when Sarah's sister gets married and moves to Pennsylvania and her new life in the Amish community, the ties between the two are broken.

When Sarah receives word that her sister, by now a widow with 4 children, has passed away, she heads for the funeral. With her job at stake this is no easy decision. But what happens when she gets there will alter her life forever.

After the funeral is over the Department of Social Services comes around. Their plan, in the absence of any other course of action, is to place the children in seperate foster homes. The community turns to the Elders of the Church for a decision. It becomes clear that unless Sarah takes it upon herself to become the children's Guardian, that they will be seperated and brought up outside of their faith. This poses quite a dilemma for Sarah, who is not Amish. She files a story with her paper and the response is overwhelming. Her editor is thrilled and wants more of the story.

Sarah, caught between a rock and a hard place, decides to take the children home to Oregon and a life wholly unfamiliar to them. Everything is new to these kids, who range in age from 6 to 16 years old. Sarah enrolls them in school, where they face predictable obstacles. And she keeps writing columns about the experience. As the kids adjust to their new lives, concessions are made concerning their religous beliefs, even as the children themselves begin to change.

With a "tear jerker" ending, in which everyone gets what they want, Sarah rediscovers her own spirituality, the children get the home they need and the people around them discover the joy and freedom that comes of diversity. But it is Sarah who learns the most valuable lesson of all - that sometimes things get lost for a reason. And that sometimes a loss can be a prelude to a larger gain.

"that bird has my wings" by jarvis jay masters

The small letters at the top of the page are no accident. No typo. They are indicative of the humility with which Mr. Masters writes of his life.

Dealt an awful hand at birth, he details his early years vividly. Raised for the first 4 or 5 years in a drug house in Long Beach, California his recollections there are of playing with the multi colored ballons which were popular in the late 1960's for dealing heroin. After being taken from his mother by the Department of Social Services, he is placed in a foster home. He speaks lovingly of Mr. and Mrs. Procks, two elderly Christian folks who never had a child of their own. Theirs may have been the only unconditional love that he has ever known. But this respite from misery doesn't last too long.

He is taken from Mr. and Mrs. Procks and sent to live with the Duponts, as villianous a couple as ever invented by Charles Dickens. Deprivations and beatings are the norm in this house. This is the point where you start to see the system fail the author. His innocence becomes a casualty of the very people who are supposed to protect him.

Running away to Los Angeles he meets and is befriended by "Rags", an elderly black shoeshine man, at the Greyhound Station. After about a week of living at the terminal "Rags" convinces him to be placed in Juvenile Hall.

The juvenile hall is where he first becomes “institutionalized.” He sees the fence surrounding him as being protective rather than restrictive. Having had all the love and it’s attendant experiences snatched from him twice already and with the experience of his last foster parents still fresh in his mind, he is comfortable in the predictability of his life at Juvenile Hall.

Being surrounded by kids whose lives have been as troubled as his own makes him feel “normal.” But he cannot stay there forever and his caseworker tries for a year to find him a home. But everywhere he is taken he can see the signs of abuse in the other childrens eyes, all the while wondering why the caseworker cannot.

After searching unsuccessfully for a year he is transferred, at his own request, to “Boys Town of the Desert.” This is an institution for troubled kids, ones who have been sent there by the courts. They eagerly count down the days until their release, which confuses Jarvis. After all, this is the first place he has been in since the first foster home that seems safe to him. He soon discovers the truth.

The place is run along the lines of a prison, with the inmates organized into rival gangs. At this point his life takes it’s first wrong turns. While the others use the point system to have their sentences shortened so they can go home, he begins to “act out” in order to remain incarcerated. After all, he has no where to go if they release him early. This would mean going back to a foster home, which, given his last experience, is not an option for him.

He is now in the grips of the system and it will have terrible ramifications for him in the years to come. This is the point at which the system truly fails him. All the warning signs are there and yet his case worker remains blind- concerned only with "placing him" somewhere.

After running away and getting caught several times he finally comes to live with his Aunt and Uncle and his cousins. They're into dealing pot and eventually he falls into a pattern of crime and spends most of his life incacerated. Finally he is charged with conspiracy to murder a guard and is sentenced to death. He is currently appealing that sentence based on a technicality, though he still maintains his innocence.

The book is well written and reads quickly. It is astonishing to me how so many people could have failed this kid so badly. His sense of self worth still intact, Mr. Jarvis has written a superb account of one of the most neglected groups in our country- juvenile offenders.

They are locked in a wasteland from which someone must rescue them now or pay the larger bill later. This is an exceptional read.