Stranger Care

May you always feel at home.

After deciding not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, try to adopt a baby through foster care. Knowing that the system aims for reunification with the birth family, they open their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate, and prepare them to welcome a child into their lives—even if it most likely means giving that child up.

After years of starts and stops, the phone call finally comes: a three-day-old baby girl, Coco, in urgent need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home.

‘You were never ours,’ Sarah tells her, ‘yet we belong to each other.’

A love letter to Coco and to the countless others like her, Stranger Care shares Sarah’s discovery of what it means to mother: in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but also the birth mother who loves the child too. Coco’s story is a reminder that we depend on family, and that family can take many different forms.

Sarah Sentilles, author of the acclaimed Draw Your Weapons, brings her powerful prose and fearless compassion to an intimate subject with universal concerns: What does it mean to mother? How can we care for and protect one another? And how do we ensure a better future for life on this planet?