BOOK REVIEW: Foster care heroes provide lol”

By Jane Robertson
DAVID LEARMONT’S The Foster Factory intrigued me because the last thing I expected from a tale of how a retired man and his wife became foster carers in their mid-sixties was to be made to laugh on almost every page.

 David and Marsha Learmont are an admirable couple, she with her kind heart and he with his “heart of stone” — also his wit, irony, sarcasm, jaundiced outlook on life and the frailties of human nature.

Lots of targets are sharply skewered and it is all done with an inspired balance between laugh-out-loud and swallow-a-lump-in-your-throat lack of sentimentality.
I could only admire these two “foster heroes” as David calls them, and it is heartening that there are people willing to pour so much energy and commitment into taking on troubled children and helping them. Neither does the author spare the negligent parents, and the book provides fascinating insights as to what real foster caring is like, as opposed to it’s sometimes rather goody-goody image. (It’s on Amazon Kindle and Nook books as well as in paperback.)