Gil Cardinal’s Foster Child opens with the story of how he met his foster mother. She tells the tale of a little boy who was scared of everything, mentioning that she had heard he was abused but didn’t know much about what had happened to him before he entered their home as a shy two year old. He immediately confuses it with the story of another kid raised in the same home. And nobody really knows what happened to him before they got there. It’s an effective way to set the stage, to show that Cardinal is not going to have an easy time finding out more about his roots.