Painting in words an eerie landscape of life without family or love as a ward in the Southern California court system, Jeremy Bracamontes reconstructs his story with raw empathy and sharp insight. Tucked feebly between the merciless worlds of shelter homes, foster care, and orphanages are brief, glimmering flashes of goodness that form the cornerstone of his survival. After the loss of his father to a premature death and his mother to addiction and incarceration, at a precariously young age, Jeremy is forced to confront the dark realities of more than just grief. Entering the bureaucracies of the social work system and left to be raised by a series of shifting caregivers, he tries to stay on the path of right when all things steer him wrong. With the scent of jacaranda filling every page, Jeremy gets under the skin of the whirlwind SoCal of the eighties and nineties, imbuing the decades with undercurrents of darkness that fuel the real nightmares he encounters. Struggling to outlast the odds, he will have to dig deep to find the hope and courage that it takes to create a better future. Jeremy Bracamontes survived group homes all around Orange County, California, from age five until he joined the Navy as a cryptologic technician at nineteen. He has a master’s degree in cyber security from The George Washington University. After serving, Jeremy was employed as a federal contractor with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan supporting special operations. He then moved into leadership roles providing strategic business development to both large and small defense contracting firms around DC. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and children. Jeremy’s wife pushed him to write this memoir to help good kids who have struggled and for his family to understand the hardships endured.