Atheneum Books for Young Readers; 2015

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In Three Little Words, published when she was 18, Rhodes-Courter recounted the nine years she spent in the foster system. This painful period ended when she said, with the wariness of a child who’d been shuffled through a string of abusive foster homes, “I guess so” to a permanent family. In the years since, this extraordinary young woman (she just turned 30) graduated from college and earned a master’s in social work; became an advocate for foster youth; ran for Florida’s state Senate; married; became a foster parent; became a biological and adoptive mother; and wrote a second must-read memoir.