First published 2023
On March 26, 2018, rescuers found an SUV and eight bodies at the bottom of a Pacific Coast Highway cliff. The crash killed Jennifer and Sarah Hart, a white married couple, along with six Black children they had adopted from Texas families. Investigators ruled it murder-suicide, but journalist Roxanna Asgarian dug deeper. She traced how the Hart family moved repeatedly across state lines while child welfare agencies missed clear signs of abuse. Asgarian centers her investigation on the birth families who lost their children to adoption. Her reporting exposes how Texas child welfare workers removed these children without proper cause and failed to properly vet the adoptive parents. The book reveals systematic racial bias in foster care and adoption, showing how agencies separate children of color from their families while inadequately protecting them in new homes. Asgarian offers readers a rigorous examination of institutional failures that led to this tragedy.
Genres: crime, biography-memoir, investigative-journalism, adoption, current-affairs, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, social-commentary
Setting: Pacific Coast Highway, Texas
Period: 2018
320 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: child-abuse, racism