An anatomy of survival, which could prove vital to those marked by sexual abuse.
Husted, an accomplished actor, comes to terms with childhood sexual abuse in this courageous yet harrowing debut memoir.
Husted is the youngest of three brothers who grew up in rural Michigan with an absent father who had a string of criminal offenses ranging from minor misdemeanors to check fraud. Their mother was a fragile, somewhat naive woman who, in search of financial security, married George, the stepfather of nightmares. Appearing benevolent at first, he revealed himself to be venomously strict with the brothers. Alarm bells rang when he forced them to strip naked and lie backside up on the bed. He subjected the boys to brutal whippings with a belt while seeming to gain gratification from viewing their prone bodies. George manipulated the boys by paying them to give him massages, and the author reveals how, at 8 years old, he was encouraged to explore his stepfather’s body, which ultimately led to him sexually gratifying the older man. This abuse became a regular occurrence, and the author explains how a young boy can easily confuse a sexual predator’s coercions with an act of love. The encounters, described in detail, are heartbreakingly difficult to read. The boy becomes a self-fashioned detective, trying to ascertain whether the relationship he is experiencing is discernible in other family units. Cracks begin to show when his older brother Gary stands up to George, threatening him with an ax and accusing him of molestation. Bewilderingly, the boys’ mother chooses to ignore the accusations and continues her relationship with George. The memoir is a survival narrative, about growing up and coming to understand not only the abuser but those who enable the abuse. The author also openly describes coming to terms with his own sexuality as he realizes that he is attracted to men. The almost unbearable psychological trauma depicted here is offset by a powerful positivity as the author turns valiantly to face his past head on, writing with an admirable eloquence and honesty.
An anatomy of survival, which could prove vital to those marked by sexual abuse.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492243014
Page Count: 250
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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