Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.70973
EAN num: 9780812923940
ISBN number: 0812923944
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 331
Printing Date: June 01, 1999
Publishing house: Crown
Release Date: June 01, 1999
Sale Popularity Level: 2221680
Studio: Crown
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Product Description:
In an era when headlines often seem dominated by horrific stories about abused children, Solomon's Sword weaves together the elements of two painful custody battles into a memorable book that no reader who cares about children will be able to put aside. The very first story unfolds around Gina Pellegrino, who, in 1991, hours after giving birth to a daughter, abandons the child in a Connecticut hospital, and Cynthia and Jerry LaFlamme, a childless New Haven couple who have waited five years for an adoptive baby. When asked by a caseworker to name their highest priority--do they prefer a boy, a girl, an infant, a toddler--the LaFlammes say they simply want a 'risk-free baby,' one who can't be taken from them under any circumstances. Four months after the baby girl has come to live with them--and soon before their adoption would become legal--Pellegrino reappears, hoping to reclaim the child.
Next, Michael Shapiro describes the Melton sisters, living with nineteen children amid squalour and vermin in a drafty Chicago rowhouse. One snowy night in February 1994, policemen discover the children and evacuate them as a TV camera rolls, searing into our collective conscience shameful images of the officers emerging from the house with child after child in their arms. Though the children are not victims of outright abuse, their neglect compels authorities to hold the threat of permanent removal over their hapless mothers.
In examining the collision between Gina Pellegrino's belated commitment to her daughter and the LaFlammes' threatened adoption of the girl, as well as the Meltons' inability to understand their parental shortcomings, Shapiro meets judges, lawyers, social workers, clergy, and therapists who must advocate a course of action not only in these two cases, but in thousands more every year across America. Reading about these dedicated people who are in the vanguard of new approaches to the problem of mistreated children will leave readers hopeful that we are finally learning how to ameliorate this enduring national disgrace. Solomon's Sword sheds new light on a dire social problem in a powerful book that will influence public policy for years to come.
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Rated by buyers 
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The book came in a very timely manner. I was very pleased because I was on a timeline.
Rated by buyers -
I was disappointed by the decisions of the judges in the LaFlammes case. But the Melton case was different. The reader gets 2 different stories about 2 different scenarios. I was kind of thrown off by the irrelevant stories that shapiro had thrown in. That is the only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars. It would have been a better read if the author would have just stuck to the point of the finalities and decisions of the stories instead of throwing in extra chapters that were kind of irrelevant to the other ones that actually had something to do with the cases mentioned.
Other than that, great book
Rated by buyers -
Shapiro applies his first-rate reporting skills to the issue of child neglect and delivers a book full of uncommon insights.
Rated by buyers 
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Well-written with good prose style, but... 1. The two stories the author tells (a thwarted adoption in Connecticut; removal of 19 children from a group of sisters in Chicago) just don't hang together. These two stories have little in common, and the author is awkwadly trying to force them together. 2. The rest of the book is too cosmic -- trying to pigeonhole everything from the feudal system to the Catholic church, and move back and forth between those generalities and the two unrelated stories. 3. Political bias. Well, what can you expect from an author who teaches at Columbia Journalism School (I know, I graduated from there in 1966)? What you get is someone who accepts what Bernardine Dohrn (a convicted criminal) says and then sneers at Newt Gingrich (without, obviously, having ever read anything Mr. Gingrich has had to say on the topic the author writes about). So what we have here is coverage of the spectrum from slightly left of center to way out there in left field. 4. The author WILL NOT come to a conclusion. It's all "on the one hand this, on the other hand that" which gives a surface impression of evenhandedness but in the end is very frustrating. Still, parts of the story are well done -- the Connecticul couple's story is the better written of the two. All in all, worth a look, especially if you're new to this field.
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