In 2008, I watched the movie Gone, Baby, Gone and I'm still angry about the ending! I didn't realize until recently that this excellent movie came from a book by Dennis Lehane (who also wrote Mystic River and Shutter Island).
This movie (and the book) portray the parents we work with everyday at CASA more accurately than any other work I've seen or read. Helene, the mother of missing 4-year-old Amanda, could be the mother from every case I've ever served. She's not intentionally trying to hurt her child, she doesn't physicall abuse her child, but she is unable to put her child's needs before her own and because of this, she neglects all of Amanda's needs.
I finished the book last night, and while I enjoyed it, this may be one of the rare exceptions where the movie was just as good as the book or maybe even better (others in this category for me are The Shawshank Redemption from Stephen King's novella and LA Confidential which came from the book of the same name by James Ellroy). If you don't have time to read the book, I'd highly recommend watching the movie. We showed it as a CASA movie night, and I think everyone there agreed that Lehane captured the essence of the neglectful parent in Helene.
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