By Wendy Welch
“Fall or Fly is a compelling, unvarnished glimpse into the complex world of foster care and adoption in modern-day Appalachia. Dr. Welch provides readers with a multifaceted view of the system through the eyes of children, foster parents, and caseworkers. It will surely become a treasured resource, not only for those interested in becoming foster or adoptive parents but for those who desire a more complete understanding of the foster care system.”
Senator Bill Carrico, Virginia State Legislature
“Fall or Fly offers a broad view of foster care in Appalachia…. Providing multiple perspectives alongside one another preserves tensions and contradictions that are necessary for (Welch’s) thorough exploration of foster care and adoption…. Welch provides … multiple stories and personal observations that have sometimes been missing from mainstream debate.”
Appalachian Journal
“This book zeroes in on the foster care and adoption system in the Appalachian coalfields. It tells the story with an adept combination of close looks at the experiences of the three parties involved—the kids, the social workers, and the courts.”
Appalachian Mountain Books
Chaos. Frustration. Compassion. Desperation. Hope. These are the five words that author Wendy Welch says best summarize the state of foster care in the coalfields of Appalachia. Her assessment is based on interviews with more than sixty social workers, parents, and children who have gone through “the system.” The riveting stories in Fall or Fly tell what foster care is like, from the inside out.
In depictions of foster care and adoption, stories tend to cluster at the dark or light ends of the spectrum, rather than telling the day-to-day successes and failures of families working to create themselves. Who raises other people’s children? Why? What’s money got to do with it when the love on offer feels so real? And how does the particular setting of Appalachia—itself so frequently oversimplified or stereotyped—influence the way these questions play out?
In Fall or Fly, Welch invites people bound by a code of silence to open up and to share their experiences. Less inspiration than a call to caring awareness, this pioneering work of storytelling journalism explores how love, compassion, money, and fear intermingle in what can only be described as a marketplace for our nation’s greatest asset.
Wendy Welch is the executive director of the Southwest Virginia Graduate Medical Education Consortium and the author, coauthor, or editor of six books, including Fall or Fly: The Strangely Hopeful Story of Foster Care and Adoption in Appalachia (also from Ohio University Press). She advocates for social justice in health care and other critical areas of development across Appalachia. More info →
Review in Appalachian Journal
Download
Retail price:
$22.95 ·
Save 20% ($18.36)
Retail price:
$49.95 ·
Save 20% ($39.96)
US and Canada only
Availability and price vary according to vendor.
Share 
Permission to reprint
Permission
to photocopy or include in a course pack
via Copyright Clearance
Center
Paperback
978-0-8214-2302-8
Retail price: $22.95,
T.
Release date: January 2018
198 pages
·
6 × 9 in.
Rights: World
Hardcover
978-0-8214-2301-1
Retail price: $49.95,
S.
Release date: January 2018
198 pages
·
6 × 9 in.
Rights: World
Electronic
978-0-8214-4623-2
Release date: January 2018
198 pages
Rights: World
Counting Down
A Memoir of Foster Parenting and Beyond
By Deborah Gold
When Deborah Gold and her husband signed up to foster parent in their rural mountain community, they did not foresee that it would lead to a roller-coaster fifteen years of involvement with a traumatized yet resilient birth family. They fell in love with Michael (a toddler when he came to them), yet they had to reckon with the knowledge that he could leave their lives at any time.In Counting Down, Gold tells the story of forging a family within a confounding system.
Adoption and Fostering · Memoir · Creative Nonfiction · Appalachia · Trade Nonfiction
Thinking Outside the Girl Box
Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia
By Linda Spatig and Layne Amerikaner
Written in an accessible, engaging style and drawing on collaborative ethnographic research that the girls themselves helped conduct, Thinking Outside the Girl Box tells the true story of an innovative program determined to challenge the small, disempowering “boxes” girls and women are so often expected to live in.
Women’s Studies · Anthropology · Appalachia · United States · North America · Americas
Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean
Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia
Edited by Adrian Blevins and Karen Salyer McElmurray
In essays that take wide-ranging forms—ideal for creative nonfiction classes—established and emerging writers with roots in Appalachia take on the theme of silencing in Appalachian culture. They write about families left behind, hard-earned educations, selves transformed, identities chosen, and risks taken.
American Literature · Appalachia · Literature · Creative Nonfiction
