My Flesh and Blood

Susan Tom is divorced and lives with her thirteen children, eleven of them adopted, in California. With minimal state welfare support and stoic composure she manages somehow to provide for her chaotic household of kids – most of them either seriously ill, maimed from an accident, with physical birth defects or behavioral problems. Jonathan Karsh, winner of multiple Emmy Awards for his work on a California news program, gave up his job to devote himself to the making of this documentary about a very unusual ‘family unit’. From a fly-on-the-wall perspective he shows how much joy-of-living a big family can summon to combat the pressures of personal suffering, but also how the individual can sometimes get lost in the fray.