Cathy Glass

Cathy Glass is the name a British foster carer publishes under, and the pen name exists to keep the children in her books unidentifiable; the details of each case are altered for the same reason. Damaged, her first, came out in 2007 and sold in very large numbers, and more than thirty have followed, most of them the story of one placement from the arrival at her door to whatever came after. Nobody's Son, from 2017, is Alex: born to a mother who could not keep him, adopted, then returned to care when his adoptive mother died and his adoptive father decided he could not manage. Glass writes about the system as much as about the children, and social workers read the books as closely as anyone.