We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death and Child Removal in America (2023) by investigative journalist, Roxanna Asgarian, is the harrowing story of a murder-suicide.

In 2018, a white married couple drove their car over a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 2 women had adopted 6 African American children, 3 siblings each from 2 families. 5 of those children were now dead, and 1 was missing.

Asgarian centres the birth families of the dead children and uncovers a disturbing system of racial bias when removing children and a lack of knowledge about prospective adoptive parents.