“An absorbing piece of narrative nonfiction . . . A rare glimpse of what it is like to man these front lines of the war on child abuse—and what it does to a person’s soul. . . . Devastating [and] mesmerizing.”—The Los Angeles Times

Featuring a new Afterword by the author

Why does an infant die of malnutrition? Why does an eight-year-old hold a knife to his brother’s throat? Or a mother push her cherished daughter twenty-three floors to her death? Marc Parent, a city caseworker, searched the streets—and his heart—for the answers, and shares them in this powerful, vivid, beautifully written book.