Blood Sisters: A Memoir

At 10, Betsy Toppin's life was going fine until the day a Family Court judge ordered her to leave Mama Cope, her foster mother—the only parent she had known—and live with strangers: her biological parents. Before she was able to understand what it all meant she had gone from being safe and loved to unsafe and unloved, and middle class Catholic to lower class Protestant: none of which pleased her. But the heart of Blood Sisters is not the abuse she endured as the result of one bad decision made by one rushed judge. It is the power of sisterhood. It is the story of how Bootsie, a tomboy and their father’s favorite, willingly gave up her favored place in the family to protect Betsy—the sister she never knew she had—from their father’s demons. And how, together, they learned to never give up hope, no matter what.