"Hope's Boy"

"Hope's Boy:  a memoir,"  by Andrew Bridge

"Hope's Boy" is a story of the triumph of the human spirit -- of one man's journey from foster care to Harvard Law School, and beyond.

There are over half-a-million children in the United States living in some kind of foster care. Two-thirds will be reunited with their birth parents within two years. Most of those who remain can spend years waiting for some kind of home.

"Hope's Boy," a gripping new memoir, sheds light on some of the hardships faced by one such child -- Andrew Bridge.

He was separated from his mentally ill mother and grew up in foster care and at Los Angeles' notorious MacLaren Hall. Years later, the state-run children's center faced child abuse allegations, and was closed in 2003.

Now a lawyer, Bridge overcame his childhood challenges and turned them into something good: the determination to fight for children's rights -- rights he never had as a boy.

And after a scholarship to Wesleyan University and that Harvard law degree, Bridge went on to be a founding director of the New Village School in L.A. -- and an advocate for children's rights.