Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family

“If you want a lifechanging book, this is the one to read.” —The View

“A truly revealing” (Hillary Clinton) memoir of an unlikely journey to parenthood through America’s broken foster care system.

What does it take to keep a child safe?

As a long-time strategist and activist fighting for better outcomes for foster children, Mark Daley thought he knew the answer. But when Ethan and Logan, an adorable infant and a precocious toddler, entered their lives, Mark and his husband Jason quickly realized they were not remotely prepared for the uncertainty and complication of foster parenting.

Every day seven hundred children enter the foster care system in the United States, and thousands more live on the brink. Safe offers a deeply personal and “riveting” (Booklist) window into what happens when the universal longing for family crashes up against the unique madness and bureaucracy of a child protection system that often fails to consider the needs of the most vulnerable parties of all—the children themselves.

Daley takes us on a roller-coaster ride as he and Jason grapple with Ethan and Logan’s potential reunification with their biological family, learn brutal lessons about sacrifice, acceptance, and healing, and face the honest, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious challenges of becoming a parent at the intersection of intergenerational trauma, inadequate social support, and systemic issues of prejudice.

For fans of Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know, Stephanie Land’s Maid, and Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family, Safe is “a strong indictment of a failed child welfare system, but with an unexpectedly happy ending that speaks to the power of love” (Kirkus Reviews).