Daddy's Little Soldier: When home is a war zone, who can little Tom trust?

Description

Quiet and polite, obsessively neat, clean and tidy, eight-year-old Tom is unlike any child Maggie has ever fostered before. Tom has been taken into care following concerns that his dad is struggling to cope after the death of Tom's mum. At first, Maggie doesn't know what to make of this shy, nervous little boy who never cries and is terrified of getting dirty. But as Tom's cleaning rituals start to get more extreme, Maggie fears that there's something more sinister going on beneath the surface. When she meets Tom's dad Mark, a stern ex-soldier and strict disciplinarian, it's clear that Tom's life at home without his mummy has been a constant battlefield. Can Maggie help Mark to raise a son and not a soldier? Or is little Tom going to lose his daddy too?

Maggie Hartley has fostered more than 300 children while being a foster carer for over twenty years. Taking on the children other carers often couldn't cope with, Maggie helps children that are deemed 'unadoptable' because of their behaviour or the extreme trauma they've been through. She's looked after refugees, supported children through sexual abuse and violence court cases, cared for teenagers on remand and taught young mums how to parent their newborn babies. www.facebook.com/MaggieHartleyAuthor/