This book draws on archival, oral history and public policy sources to tell a history of foster care in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present day. It is, primarily, a social history which places the voices of people directly touched by foster care at the centre of the story, but also within the wider social and political debates which have shaped foster care across more than a century. The book confronts foster care's difficult past-death and abuse of foster children, family separation, and a general public apathy towards these issues-but it also acknowledges the resilience of people who have survived a childhood in foster care, and the challenges faced by those who have worked hard to provide good foster homes and to make child welfare systems better. These are themes which the book examines from an Australian perspective, but which often resonate with foster care globally.

In 1879, Mary Baker Eddy founded her Christian Science church on the basis that her spiritual healing system would transform all who used it, physically, mentally, and morally. For many Victorian women, this was true: they were healed, they were transformed, and Eddy's church flourished with a majority of women members. However, by the second wave feminist movement, the church was in decline and hasn't revived despite late twentieth century interest in the conjunction between women, religion, and healing. The author argues that a number of decisions that were made and policies that were implemented by successive Boards of Directors of the church had a negative impact on women's experience of the religion during the twentieth century.