The Outside Child: A True Story of Survival (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798180713131)

His hands have shaken since before he could speak. The reason is the first thing that ever happened to him - a wound he survived as an infant, and the opening note of a childhood spent being punished for things he didn't do.

The Outside Child follows that boy from house to house and finally into the one he came to call the Hell House: a place where a stepmother's cruelty was rationed out in cold rooms, locked doors, an empty stomach, and a board, while the adults who could have stopped it looked away. It is the story of the few who finally saw him, the long road afterward through institutions and group homes, and the slow, stubborn work of building a life the abuse had tried to make impossible.

This is not a comfortable book, and it never pretends the damage simply washes off. But it is, in the end, a survivor's book - honest about the cost and unwilling to lie about the hope. He wrote it for two people: the grandmother who believed him without proof, and the child trapped tonight who needs to know there is a way out, and that it is worth the fight.

A true story, told the way he remembers it.