There have been no big reviews in the New York Times, the LA Times or the Washington Post or, heaven forbid, the New York Review of Books.

Yet, I noticed Sunday morning that a new book was residing at a comfy number eight on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, just a couple of notches below Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You).

The unsung book selling quietly like hotcakes is called Hope’s Boy, written by a man named Andrew Bridge. As a child, Bridge spent 11 years in Los Angeles County foster care after he was taken away from his mentally ill mother. For part of that time, he lived in the now-closed, Dickensian hell hole that was McClaren Hall, LA’s once-notorious group residence for foster kids.

Bridge’s was a childhood that statistically-speaking nearly always predicts failure: A mind-boggling 50 percent of the kids who come to adulthood within the foster care system will be homeless within two years. Only 2 percent of the nation’s 500,000-plus children in foster care ever get a college degree. Bridge blew the odds out of the water by getting a scholarship to Wesleyan, then becoming a Fulbright Scholar, and graduating from Harvard Law School.

Since graduation, he has spent most of his adult life advocating for America’s children who, for one reason or another, are stuck in the awful social service mechanism known as “the system.”

I first met Bridge in early 2000 when I was working on an article for the LA Weekly about the foster care system.

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