If You Like A Child Called “It”…
Dave Pelzer’s first book, A Child Called “It”, has been on the New York Times Bestseller List for over 6 years. This autobiographical account charts a truly extraordinary life. He nearly died several times at the hands of his mentally disturbed alcoholic mother. Years later it was determined that Dave’s case was identified as one of the most gruesome and extreme cases of child abuse in California's history. As an adult, Pelzer went from victim to victor. Browse these memoir titles by other authors telling their own heart wrenching life story.
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When Rabbit Howls By Truddi Chase As a young girl, Truddi Chase suffered horrors that only some can bear to even dream about. Her only escape was her mind, and she locked herself away in it. She created the inner world of “the Troops”, ninety-two different personalities all with their own names and features to shield her from the pain. This book is her journey through the fragmented world of the multiple personality disorder. |
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When Katie Wakes: A Memoir by Connie May Fowler Fowler is known to the world as the author of bestselling novels and powerful essays—but no one knew that for years she was the victim of brutal abuse and relentless humiliation. Now in this harrowing, spellbinding memoir, Fowler finally tells her own story. |
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Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood By Julie Gregory From early childhood, Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on - in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother's mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world's most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker - almost always the mother - invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman. |
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Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found By Jennifer Lauck A grim portrait of the author as a child, Lauck recounts the loss of her chronically ill mother at the age of six. As if life hasn't already thrown her a curve ball, her father quickly remarries and Jennifer's stepmother, a cruel woman at best, brings her own children to the Lauck family. When her father suddenly dies, she is left at the mercy of her stepmother and stepsiblings and a childhood spinning out of control. |
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Somebody's Someone: A Memoir By Regina Louise Abandoned by her mother at birth, Regina recalls the horrors that unfolded daily in the illegal foster home where her mother left her and the years she spent within the traditional foster care system. |
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Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Houses By Paula McLain An unflinching recollection of three young sisters, abandoned by their parents and raised as wards of the Fresno County, California court shuttled from foster home to foster home across 14 years. |
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Becoming Anna: The Autobiography of a Sixteen-Year-Old by Anna J. Michener Labeled evil and unstable by her family, “Tiffany” suffers abuse at the hands of her parents until they institutionalize her in a mental hospital at sixteen. In raw diary entries, she shares details of her adolescent life within institutional walls and upon release the creation of her new identity, Anna. |
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Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress By Thylias Moss Moss's memoir begins at age 5 when a family with an older girl moves into the apartment downstairs. The girl, Lytta, becomes Thylias's baby sitter, and over the course of several years terrorizes her young charge. |
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A Brother's Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse by Richard B. Pelzer The brother of the bestselling author of "A Child Called "It"" reveals his perspective both on what happened to Dave, his guilt for his role, and how the family functioned after Dave was taken away to a foster home. |
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A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood by Richard Rhodes An award-winning author recounts the abuse he and his brother endured at the hands of their terrorizing stepmother and negligent father, and tells of the courageous role his brother played in delivering them to the care of others who would protect and support them. |
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Wayne: An Abused Child's Story of Courage, Survival, and Hope By Wayne Theodore Haunted by memories of a childhood stolen, "Wayne" finds himself on a path of self-destruction. Drug addiction and attempted suicide were once the only answers to the pain of years of daily beatings, degradation and abandonment. Discover how he was able to find the strength to rise above his childhood and build a life that he could never have imagined. |
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First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple By Cameron West West describes the struggles he and his family go through as several of his "alter" personalities begin to emerge, threatening to crumble the walls of West's mind--walls he unconsciously erected when he was subjected to devastating childhood sexual abuse. |
Note: annotations collected from Syndetic Solutions and Amazon.com