Like+Family



=Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses, A Memoir = =by Paula McLain =

Like Family is about a situation most of us cannot begin to fathom -- not getting to know one's biological parents in one's formative years, never having a real "home" -- she tells her story with amazing insight and humor and, yes, some sadness. But the sadness does not tip the scales. McLain, a poet who now lives in Wisconsin and teaches poetry at New England College, has an even hand. She has gained enough distance from her extremely unsettled childhood. Despite some terrible occurrences, and because of a great love she shares with her sisters, she gets through and is able to write about it in an amazingly objective way. The three McLain girls' mother leaves them when they are very young (the author is four at the time); their father is in jail. They live with their elderly grandmother and an aunt for a while, but these relatives are unable to keep the girls for long, so they become wards of the state. Through the '70s and '80s, their early childhood through teenage years, the sisters live in several foster homes in California, the longest with the Lindberghs, a couple with a daughter, horses, and dogs. In all fairness to the foster parents, the sisters do have some wonderful experiences: sailing, camping, having their own ponies, getting new bicycles, throwing parties at home, and more. Yet along with these quite usual and some idyllic family events, they also experience some extremely strict rules and some horror.
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