Someone Has Led This Child to Believe

By Regina Louise

Bolden, 2018, ISBN-13: 978-1-57284-222-9, 235 pages, $15

The much-awaited follow-up to Regina Louise’s 2008 bestselling memoir “Somebody’s Someone” is finally here. “Someone Has Led This Child to Believe” picks up where Louise’s first book left off, filling in some of the gaps in her story with things she discovered after her first book was released. “Somebody’s Someone” described Louise’s experience growing up first in her abusive family in Texas, then in her father’s home in California, before she was placed in multiple foster and group homes. In her latest book, Louise goes into more details about her group home experiences.

In the first book, Louise’s heartbreaking and unproductive search for the one person who had loved her — and tried to adopt her — left the reader wondering if they would ever reconnect. “Someone Has Led This Child to Believe” reveals the outcome of that search, and the pair’s reunion.

“Someone Has Led This Child to Believe” is a quick read that helps fill the gaps of Louise’s story, which is being made into a Lifetime movie. It would be difficult to read this book without the background provided by the first book. And the newest book is a drastically different style read than the first book which probably speaks to the 10 years of lived experience Louise has had since the release of “Somebody’s Someone.” The newest book does provide a deeper look into the challenges of residential care and the policies that drove placements of children at the time Louise was growing up. My hope would be that readers could take away a greater understanding of the harm caused to children because of certain policies that wouldn’t allow workers in group homes to adopt the children in those facilities.

And while recognizing Louise’s African American race and trying to connect her with parents of the race was important, it also left her without a home and family when a white woman loved her and wanted to adopt her.

— Reviewed by Kim Phagan-Hansel

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