The inspirational story of a woman's rise out of the foster-care system, told through the stories of the incredible women who each lifted her up in different ways.

Her story will inspire you. At first glance, Victoria Rowell—the graceful, breathtakingly beautiful, and incredibly accomplished star of television and film—appears to be someone who has never had to struggle at anything. You would be surprised: the truth is that given the circumstances of her inauspicious beginnings and the hurdles she has had to overcome, she probably shouldn't even be alive today. Indeed, she has not only thrived, but from the moment of her birth, the story of Vicki Lynn Collins—ward of the state and foster child until the age of emancipation—has been nothing short of miraculous.

After being born in Maine to an unmarried white mother whose lineage was Yankee blueblood and an unidentified black father, Baby Girl Collins began life as a hospital boarder infant. After sixteen days, she was placed with a Caucasian foster family—a highly discouraged practice under the state's child-welfare laws, which then prohibited the adoption of African-American or mixed-race children by white families. At this critical stage, Vicki Rowell (her biological mother's last name from a former marriage) encountered the first of what would be an astonishing array of remarkable women—each of whom presented herself for different purposes at every dramatic turn of Vicki's life, each sent to love, nurture, guide, teach, or challenge her on the road to becoming an astonishingly remarkable woman in her own right. She would go on to become a world-class ballerina and an actress whose credits include the Cosby Show and Diagnosis Murder, in addition to her long-time role on The Young and the Restless.

In The Women Who Raised Me, Victoria Rowell's survival through the labyrinth that is our heartbreakingly overburdened foster care system shows the positive possibilities of what can go right in the system by showing her gratitude to the families and institutions that fed, clothed, educated, and empowered her first eighteen years. In the process, her book serves to pay tribute to her personal champions: the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, mentors, teachers, fosterers, and sisters whose stories are woven through hers.

Publisher Comments: Born as a ward of the state of Maine, the child of an unmarried Yankee blueblood mother and an unknown black father, Victoria Rowell beat the odds. The Women Who Raised Me is the remarkable story of her rise out of the foster care system to attain the American Dream—and of the unlikely series of women who lifted, motivated, and inspired her along the way. From Agatha Armstead—a black Bostonian who was Victoria's longest-term foster mother and first noticed her spark of creativity and talent—to Esther Brooks, a Paris-trained prima ballerina who would become her first mentor at the Cambridge School of Ballet—The Women Who Raised Me is a loving, vivid portrait of all the women who would help Victoria transition out of foster care and into New York City's wild worlds of ballet, acting, and adulthood. Though Victoria would go on to become an accomplished television and film star, she still carried the burden of loneliness and anxiety, particularly common to those "orphans of the living" who are never adopted. Vividly recalled and candidly told, her story is transfixing, redemptive, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.