“When foster kids get in trouble with the law, why do we hold them responsible but not the state that raised them?
“In this brilliant, moving, and enraging book, Claudia Rowe calls child welfare to account for the homelessness and prison time that are often the next, and sometimes final, step for foster kids who age out of the system. If you wonder why prisons and shelters are full, this story is a large part of the answer.”
–Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help
Claudia Rowe's Wards of the State takes the reader on a wrenching yet somehow uplifting journey through the failed landscape of the government's foster care system - wrenching in the mountain of shattered lives she describes, uplifting in the victories of those who battled through it.
A moving work of first-rate journalism.”
–Graham Rayman, co-author of Rikers: An Oral History
“InWards of the State, Rowe achieves something truly remarkable—she educates and captivates in equal measure.
Through vivid storytelling intertwined with incisive policy analysis, she exposes foster care as the overlooked battlefield of our war on poverty, its systemic failures often dismissed as background noise. With compassion and unflinching prose, Rowe brings to life a system less designed than inherited by happenstance, offering readers an unvarnished view into the lives shaped by its dysfunction. Refusing to excuse the system’s flaws, she invites us to witness the forces behind outcomes that too often seem tragically inevitable. Written with the pace and tension of a gripping crime drama, Wards of the State keeps readers riveted, wondering at every turn—what happens next?”
–David Ambroz, author of A Place Called Home
“Investigative reporter Claudia Rowe's important new book provides a shocking view of the void into which we cast foster children in America. These powerful portraits and dramatic scenes of the lives of foster children she has come to know reverberate with outrage, pain and fear that readers will also feel. And yet these riveting tales, artfully woven together, provide intense, invaluable and surprisingly hopeful insights on how to fix this broken system.”
–Lise Olsen, Investigative editor at The Texas Observer and author of The Scientist and the Serial Killer: The Search for Houston's Lost Boys
“Extraordinarily suspenseful and truly gut-wrenching, The Spider and the Fly is not just a superb true-crime story but an insightful investigation of the nature of evil, the fragility of good, and the crooked road that can turn human beings into monsters.
“A must-read.”
- Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
“Part psychological thriller and part gut-wrenching memoir, The Spider and the Fly by Claudia Rowe crosses boundaries on nearly every page. It is chilling, self-revelatory, and unforgettable.”
- Robert Kolker, author of Lost Girls and Hidden Valley Road
“This book astounded me.
“Claudia Rowe catalogues her obsession with a serial killer so mesmerizingly that before I knew it, I too was obsessed….But this is not merely a recounting of a descent, it is equally a memoir of discovery through the lens of potential evil. I literally could not put it down.”
- Alan Cumming, actor and author
“I missed a subway stop because I was so enthralled with this vexing book. Claudia Rowe is a supremely gifted writer, and the story of her near-obsession with a man who murdered at least eight women is both a riveting true crime saga and a brave self-portrait.”
- Julia Dahl, author of “Invisible City”
“The true story of a young boy who travels the path expected of him and lands in prison for murder at the age of 13. What happens next defies all the statistics…”
Claudia Rowe
Claudia Rowe has been writing about the places where youth and government policy clash for 34 years. She is the recipient of a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and multiple honors for investigative reporting. Her work has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Claudia has been published in The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Mother Jones, and The Stranger. In 2018, Claudia’s memoir, The Spider and the Fly, won the Washington State Book Award.
