THE TRUTH ABOUT DEMONS

Gilchrist presents a memoir of escaping an oppressive childhood, only to confront new demons in adulthood.

Born in 1962 to a devout mother and a religion-skeptic father in small-town Levittown, Pennsylvania, Gilchrist chronicles an idyllic early childhood spent cruising through the neighborhood on a green Schwinn Stingray with friends, devouring library books on science and philosophy, and contemplating the cosmos, as described in SF movies and fiction and nonfiction books about outer space by authors such as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Carl Sagan. However, his early life, he writes, was marred by cruelty at the hands of his mother, who worried that his interest in science and literature was demonic. When his father, his biggest supporter and the household’s stabilizing voice of reason, died of lung cancer in 1974, the author was effectively raised by his mother and her colleagues at the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall. What follows is a series of personal tragedies, which Gilchrist describes with incisive, visceral honesty. Emboldened by church elders, the author’s mother encouraged him to drop out of high school and work for the church full-time. Regarding his later efforts to escape from the church and build a life for himself—and to stay loyal to the curious, optimistic child he once was—Gilchrist effectively tells of confronting the real-life demons of drug abuse, a lack of housing, police brutality, and entanglements with dangerous criminals as he drifted from one job to another, struggling to keep himself afloat. The author’s telling is rich with sensory description (“Lightning bugs were taunting each other with pops of sun yellow light”), insightful about the various figures in his life, and suffused with gratitude for the people and coincidences that helped him through his most difficult moments. His sense of humor also brings a much-needed bit of levity to a story laden with hardships, reminding readers that there’s always joy to be found, even in life’s darkest moments.

A fast-paced, detailed chronicle of a life marked by struggle.