Book #1

Every foster child deserves a voice. This is mine.

In Just Another Slice, nine-year-old Sarah Bailey tries to survive in a family full of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse while at the same time trying to protect her younger brother Curtis. Sarah learns that asking for Just Another Slice of toast is not the only thing in her life she will be denied. Yet, in a world full of cruelty, she finds kindness and happiness in the most unsuspecting people, places, and things.

Sarah and Curtis’s foster care story is based on actual events about Dr. Sharon Zaffarese-Dippold and her brother, Carl. In this book, Sarah and Curtis learn they are foster children. Join their journey of laughter, pain, hope, and resiliency. You will see, hear and feel what Sarah and Curtis does throughout this sad and inspiring story of not just surviving but thriving.

Book #2

Something of her own

Based on a true story, author of Just Another Slice, Dr. Zaffarese-Dippold continues to share her foster care story in the series “Garbage Bag Life.” This book in the series sheds light on the grooming behavior of some sexual abusers, and the risk to children in the foster care system. It took less than four hours for Sarah Bailey and her younger brother Curtis to lose everything they knew. She lost her school, her mudpie stations, her church, her father, and her name. Everything they own is packed in garbage bags as they are moved to a new foster home. It’s supposed to be a safe haven for them, but as Sarah—now called Anna—learns, their so-called safety comes at a horrific price, as she is groomed and abused by her new foster mother.
But Sarah/Anna is resilient. She adapts to wearing dresses after only dressing as a boy. She befriends a wild and dangerous horse. And for her first Christmas ever, she receives a rag doll, one she carries with her still today. For a child with so little, the rag doll comes to mean so much.

Book # 3

This goodbye will break her heart 

Anna Snow and her little brother Curtis are on the move again, to yet another foster family. After the abuse she’s suffered, she doesn’t think it could get any worse, but it can. Curtis is ripped from her arms, sent to a different family. This is more than just another goodbye. This is losing the only person who’s been her constant companion, the one person she loves. Powerless, all she can do is hold the teddy bear he dropped and cry as he’s dragged out of her life. 

Anna is now truly alone. What will she do without her brother? It isn’t long before she’s moved again, and then again, from family to family, each time stuffing everything in her life into a garbage bag, feeling rejected, as if she herself is trash that nobody wants. Anna’s journey continues in this third book of the series, a riveting story of loss, pain, and sorrow as she navigates her garbage bag life as a child in the foster care system. 

Book # 4

How do you hide from the monsters in your own house? 

Based on a true story, author of Just Another Slice, Dr. Zaffarese-Dippold continues to share her foster care story in the series “Garbage Bag Life.”In this fourth book in the “Garbage Bag Life” series, Anna is forced to face unimaginable loss and the dangers to a young girl growing up in a system rife with groomers and abusers. 

Anna Snow, caught in the foster care merry-go-round, is still being shuffled from house to house, but none of them are ever really home. By the time she’s ten years old, she’s been moved  nine times, three of them happening in under three months. Anna finds a measure of love in one home, but the system yanks her away, simply because her caring foster mother is Black. 

Anna’s also still dealing with the ache of being separated from her brother. Her only connection to him is the teddy bear he dropped as he was ripped from her arms. She’ll never see her brother again, but she clings to the bear, along with her treasured Raggedy Doll, reminding her she is not alone through each wrenching move. In each foster home she finds a place to hide from those hurting her, but she’ll soon discover she’ll need to find hiding spots again to escape a far more horrific kind of abuse.

Book # 5

How do you hide from the monsters in your own house? 

Based on a true story, author of Just Another Slice, Dr. Zaffarese-Dippold continues to share her foster care story in the series “Garbage Bag Life.” In this fifth book in the “Garbage Bag Life” series Anna is passing through one front door after another, only to find them constantly slammed in her face and being rejected. When she opens the door to her mother’s car, is she finally on the way home?

Anna Snow is still going through the revolving doors of foster care, constantly changing schools and moving from place to place with nothing more than her garbage bag of meager possessions. Her brother is still lost to her somewhere else in the system. In one home, when she tries to defend her foster sister from sexual abuse, the blames fall on her and her foster sister instead.

New paths are opening before Anna, but none of them are smooth. Will any of them be the road that finally leads her home? Then someone new comes into her life. Or rather, someone from the past returns, when the path is laid for her to return to her birth mother. Is she ready for a reconciliation with a woman she’s never met?

Book # 5

How do you hide from the monsters in your own house? 

Based on a true story, author of Just Another Slice, Dr. Zaffarese-Dippold continues to share her foster care story in the series “Garbage Bag Life.” In this fifth book in the “Garbage Bag Life” series Anna is passing through one front door after another, only to find them constantly slammed in her face and being rejected. When she opens the door to her mother’s car, is she finally on the way home?

Anna Snow is still going through the revolving doors of foster care, constantly changing schools and moving from place to place with nothing more than her garbage bag of meager possessions. Her brother is still lost to her somewhere else in the system. In one home, when she tries to defend her foster sister from sexual abuse, the blames fall on her and her foster sister instead.

New paths are opening before Anna, but none of them are smooth. Will any of them be the road that finally leads her home? Then someone new comes into her life. Or rather, someone from the past returns, when the path is laid for her to return to her birth mother. Is she ready for a reconciliation with a woman she’s never met?