Turning stones

An 8-year old boy holding a knife to his younger brother's throat. Three small children who watch their older sister jump out of a twenty-third story window, following their mother's orders. Two boys whose mother believes they are all victims of a hex laid on them by her ex-husband. An eleven-year-old boy at a fashionable Manhattan address whose mother is so drunk she can't keep her robe closed when child welfare workers come to visit. These are the heroes of Marc Parent's Turning Stones, small and unsuspecting victims of a society, and of a bureaucracy, that do not know what to do with them. For three years, Marc Parent was a respected caseworker in New York City's Emergency Children's Services, a city agency created to investigate cases of abused children during the evening and nighttime hours. Parent applied himself to his work with devotion, and in his tiny charges he saw day-to-day bravery as well as some of the strangest twists the human soul can suffer. Eventually, however, Parent discovered what a thin line separates any of us from tragedy, especially when children are involved. Faced with the horror of a child's death he ultimately, inspiringly, rediscovers the feeling of making a difference in our world - if only by turning one stone at a time. There are no prescriptions or policies here, only the lives of human beings in a fearsome world, told with vividness, humor, honesty, and deep sympathy.