IIn 1973, a young ACLU attorney filed a controversial class-action lawsuit that challenged New York City s operation of its foster-care system. The plaintiff was an abused runaway named Shirley Wilder who had suffered from the system s inequities. Wilder, as the case came to be known, was waged for two and a half decades, becoming a battleground for the conflicts of race, religion, and politics that shape America s child-welfare system.
The Lost Children of Wilder gives us the galvanizing history of this landmark case and the personal story at its core. Nina Bernstein takes...