No Family Album: Chronicles of a Foster Care Survivor

When a child is removed from a home and forced to live a life with strangers, it can be a traumatic experience accompanied by pain and shame that never goes away. This is the story of Ron Huber and his unforgettable journey through a childhood hell that eventually leads him out of the darkness into a successful adult life.

Born in 1949 during the post-war era of national elation, Ron Huber's life is not joyful. When his alcoholic parents abandon him at age three, Ron is sent to two foreboding foster care ghettos where he is raised, over a span of fifteen years, by two female Victorian despots disguised as foster care mothers. After surviving beatings, scorn, emotional abuse, and back-breaking farm work, Ron finally manages to break free of the system and strikes out on his own in a cannibalistic world that nearly devours him. It is only through a miracle of emancipation and salvation that Ron emerges in adulthood as a Green Beret, book author, lecturer, government executive, and family man.

In sharing his compelling personal journey, Ron Huber provides a heartbreaking glimpse into the perils that American children still encounter through abuse and a problematic foster care system.

Edward S. Blotner was educated at Emerson College and Boston University, and has enjoyed a distinguished, award-winning lengthy career in journalism. He is co-author of Facing the World without Love, a book about foster care. He currently lives in Maryland where he is a writer and editor at the Voice of America.