A Forever Family

Starred review from September 10, 2018
Scheer, founder of Comfort Cases, a charity that provides backpacks for foster children (stocked with sleepwear, books, toiletries, etc.), shares the gripping story of his own troubled childhood and his experience adopting four foster children as an adult. As a boy growing up in 1970s Virginia, Scheer was physically abused by his father while his mother turned a blind eye. She eventually fled with her son and two older daughters only to settle with a boyfriend who was also abusive; within a few years she died of cancer, and the 12-year-old Scheer was sent to live with his biological father, who eventually abandoned him (his sisters were old enough to live on their own). A neighbor agreed to foster him, but her husband mistreated Scheer, and at 18 he left, sleeping in his car and public restrooms during his senior year of high school. After years of failed relationships as an adult, Scheer met and fell in love with a kind and caring man named Reece and they moved in together, eventually marrying. The memoir toggles between Scheer’s early life and the couple’s more recent struggle to adopt two sets of African-American siblings who arrived with their few possessions in trash bags (which later prompted Scheer to launch the Comfort Case nonprofit). Scheer’s determination to “be the father that I never had” while helping kids in the flawed foster care system, will inspire, educate, and astound readers. Agent: Cait Hoyt and David Larabell, CAA.