It was no mystery why California had 98,000 children stuck in foster care. There were not 98,003 because I was stubborn.

When David Marin fell in love with three abandoned children desperately in need of a home, there was only one thing he could do. Give up his relatively carefree life and learn how to become a parent. In the process, he found the future he had always wanted, but he also learned some hard lessons about single-parent adoption, the Kafkaesque side of Social Services, and America's anti-immigrant sentiment: Heartbreaking, funny, and inspiring, This Is US chronicles Marin's quest to create a better life for these children—and for himself.