As an avid reader, I made my way through quite a few books this year.
Some of the books were of the forgettable kind where you scan back through the list, see the title and say, “Oh, right, that book” before scrolling on and promptly forgetting it again. Others were so “sticky” that I found myself talking about them frequently and thinking about them constantly. Some were good enough to buy as Christmas presents. Others were so fascinating that I ended up buying the print copy after listening to them on audiobook. A select few were the sort of books that so shape your weltanschauung1 that I can’t look at anything the same after reading them.
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This week I’m sharing with you some of the best adoption/foster care/trauma-related books I read in 2024. I hope they’ll find their way onto your reading list for 2025 too.
First, before my recommendations, an observation: I read quite a few books about people undergoing tremendous, almost unimaginable, challenges, both physical and mental. Such experiences are bound to leave a mark on those people, both for good and for ill. Although neither the books nor the people talk about the effect of those events in these terms, I think it’s fair to describe their experiences as traumatic. So, here’s a list of books that I found simply fascinating about people going through some real hard shit. If you’re anything like me, you’ll read these books and wonder about everything that happened after the period the book covers. There are the terrible events, the dramatic climaxes, the denouements … but then what? How did these people even live after all that?2 Here are a number of titles I read in 2024 that tell absolute wild stories of the “truth is stranger than fiction” variety.
On to the recommendations:
Almost by definition, foster/adoptive families tend to be financially, professionally, relationally and otherwise pretty functional.3 If that weren’t the case, they probably wouldn’t be taking one or more high-needs kids into their home. Similarly, it’s statistically likely that if you’re financially, professionally, relationally and otherwise pretty functional, you had a stable childhood during which you received nurture and support from your parents. All of that being assumed, it’s likely that foster and adoptive families could use some help gaining both compassion and empathy for the kids in their care. If they can’t really understand the impact of a life spent at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, surrounded by generational poverty, drug and alcohol abuse commonplace, domestic violence and crime familiar, they’re probably going to over-index on the ol’ “bootstraps” perspective. (Not to kick a hornet’s nest, but there also tends to be a connection between evangelical Christianity and a tendency to blame the less-fortunate for their life circumstances. This is especially unfortunate as, from my anecdotal perspective, evangelical Christians make up a significant percentage of those who choose to be foster families. If I may be so bold – conservative Christians, recognize your privilege and help those who’ve had less of it than you. Liberals of any belief system, get some skin in the game and start fostering kids.) Anyway, all of that to say: Demon Copperhead is a book perfectly designed to build empathy, compassion, and, one can hope, action on behalf of the less fortunate. It’s also a gripping read and one of those “sticky” books that keep coming to mind long after you’ve finished them. Barbara Kingsolver, you’ve done it again.
If you’ve heard about this book before, it’s probably because of Oprah. Oprah’s involvement was helpful in one way: any project Oprah promotes is necessarily going to receive a lot of attention, which is good if, like me, you want the general public to be more trauma-informed. But Oprah also has a history of promoting bozos like Dr. Phil and Senator-elect (barf) Dr. Oz. (Now, I called Dr. Phil a bozo but, to speak my truth, I actually think he’s crazy smart with serious rizz.45) With all of that in mind, I started this book with some skepticism. Turns out it’s actually a really rich resource. Perry is able to combine neuroscience and expert-level understanding of the topic with narrative and widely-accessible explanations in a very effective way. This book might be among the first I’d recommend to new foster/adoptive parents because it’s written for lay people but the information isn’t dumbed down or oversimplified. Perry is also excellent at showing how this information can be put into practice in someone’s daily life. Finally, it’s worth noting that he offers some recommendations that go beyond the standard Western medical paradigm in really intriguing ways. He suggests that people experiencing the negative effects of trauma delve into the wisdom of indigenous peoples to find models for community-based healing, emphasizes the importance of body-based practices like dance, yoga, and regular walking/running, and, finally, the occasional, supervised use of hallucinogens. This was a book that went from a library audiobook listen to “paid for the paper copy” for me, high praise indeed.
It’s a bit of a bait and switch to put a book on your year-end recommendation list and then say “I’m not sure this is worth your time” but I just can’t make my mind up how I feel about this book. In the end, I decided to respect you all as readers and include it. If an author can write a book that, while flawed, also gives me some real “I wish I knew how to quit you” energy, then I guess she earned the book’s place on this list. On the positive side of the ledger: I think Shrier has good suggestions for building resilience and antifragility among America’s adolescents. This book is a helpful corrective to some trends in modern parenting that, in my humble opinion, instill learned helplessness in kids in ways that sap them of agency and self-respect. Unfortunately, the intellectual path she takes to reach those conclusions is riddled with potholes of illogic, strawman arguments, sweeping and unsupported generalizations, and her own apparent emotional issues which – no surprise given the book’s thesis – she has yet to gain self-awareness around. Shrier’s obvious discomfort with emotion is so intense I almost found it comical. “Almost” because I also found it sad. As therapists say, “what we resist, persists”; I wish for Shrier’s sake that she could find peace with her own feelings, in all their intensity. If she did, she’d likely be more apt to teach others that emotions are safe to experience and valuable for the information they give us about who we are and what we desire in this world.6 This, in turn, would make her argument that we need to teach kids how to partner with rather than be ruled by their feelings all the more convincing. I think this book is worth your time, but just barely.
Although I possess only a tenuous grasp on the basics of neuroscience, I have gathered from the reading I’ve done in this area that the behavioral effects of the various neurotransmitters moving through our synapses are much more significant than we’ve ever appreciated before. To that point: whereas previous generations identified drug and alcohol addiction as the shameful shortcomings of a weak or deviant mind, most of us now believe addiction to be a disease, not a moral failing. Although we still expect alcoholics to take the responsibility for managing their condition, we have increased sympathy for the neurochemistry at play that makes doing that so very difficult. Reading Dopamine Nation gave me a deeper understanding of what is happening in our brains when we find ourselves engaged in compulsive or addictive behaviors. By understanding the strong biological forces at work, I gained more compassion for people (including myself) who make bad choices in the pursuit of dopamine. The book also gives useful guidelines for loosening the clenched-fist grasp that dopamine has on so many of us. Because of the neurological effects of the early life trauma that they experienced, my kids are more likely than the average person to become addicted to drugs and/or alcohol at some point in their lives. This book is the first piece of my research into how I can help them avoid addiction or, failing that, find recovery from it. If that motivation speaks to you, I think this book is worth reading. I’m planning on reading Addiction Inoculation by Jessica Lahey in 2025. Stay tuned for next year’s “best of books” list to see if that one makes the cut too.
The stickiest of all the sticky books I read this year. This book is a tour-de-force. It also has a “once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it” effect that might make me, despite the book’s brilliance, advise you to avoid reading it. Basically, if you don’t want your paradigms broken and your mind blown, don’t read this book. The book’s premise is simple: there is no such thing as free will. From that simple premise come a maddening array of follow-up questions and ramifications that Sapolsky lays out with admirable honesty and intellectual humility. I won’t go into too much detail because the book’s complexity deserves better than this little blurb can give it. If you’re interested in testing the waters before committing to this 528-page monster, I recommend Sapolsky’s interview on the podcast Armchair Expert. Despite my prior ambivalence, I think this book might qualify as a “must-read” for foster/adoptive parents because of the seriousness with which it takes generational trauma, epigenetic effects of trauma, and first-hand experiences of trauma, beginning in utero. Like so many others of the books on my list, I think it builds understanding, empathy and compassion. Reading it left me more motivated than ever to find ways to support my kids’ in overcoming the bad hand they were dealt (which I guess maybe means I didn’t fully assimilate the “no free will” message of the book?) Let’s not worry about that; trying to talk about free will is as apt to get you tied up in knots as talking about time travel. Just read the book.
My last recommendation is also the shortest: “I guess maybe psychedelic drugs could be really helpful for people who have experienced trauma? Seems worth learning more.” I feel like that’s all I can say with confidence about this topic. Even so, the potential for healing that Pollan lays out in this book was sufficiently intriguing to make me want to recommend it to others. Pollan does a great job of combining historical narrative, scientific explanations and first-person reporting in this book. It was enough to get me googling “psilocybin clinics oregon”, although not enough to convince me to overcome my trepidation and book an appointment. Like Dopamine Nation, I think this book is just the first in a series of books that I’ll read about this topic. As an adoptive parent, I think it’s my responsibility to leave no stone un-turned in my efforts to equip my children to lead the happiest and healthiest lives they possibly can.
So there you have it: a trauma-informed, wide-ranging, and surprisingly ambivalent “best of” list for 2024. I’d love to hear from you about book recommendations for my 2025 reading as well as your feelings about these books if you’ve read them. Leave a comment with your thoughts!
And, lastly, thanks for being here with me on my baby Substack. It’s been a pleasure interacting with readers over the last couple of months. I hope you’ll join me for a lot more writing and conversation in 2025!
I believe I learned that word as a junior in high school. From that time (2004!) until now, I have never used it in print. Welcome to the lexicon, buddy.
My suspicion is that if the authors of these books had either the time, space, or inclination, they could write much more about the long-lasting effects of these experiences on their subjects. For instance, I read that one of the survivors of the Donner party tragedy, changed by the harrowing experience of near-starvation, constantly carried food in her pockets until her death at 87. Another survivor wrote in a letter, “"I wish I could cry but I cannot. If I could forget the tragedy, perhaps I would know how to cry again." These women lived in a time without any formalized concept of “trauma” as we understand it today. One can’t help but wonder how the lack of any such category affected their physiological and psychological reactions to the terrible events they lived through. (https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/What-happened-to-Donner-Party-survivors-16714121.php)
An somewhat-uncomfortable caveat: this is less often true for kinship foster families (vs. families unrelated to the foster child’s family of origin.) I plan to write about the dynamics of kinship vs. stranger placements in the new year.
Using the rare double-footnote here to tell you that most of my awareness of Dr. Phil comes from his interview on the Armchair Expert podcast: https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/dr-phil
Along those lines, I would love to see a debate between Abigail Shrier and Robert Sapolsky in which he schools her on the role that emotions play in wise decision making. In his book Behave he explains, with reference to fascinating scientific experiments, how thoroughly our decision making abilities are hampered by being disconnected from our emotions.
