Infertile Ground
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In this haunting memoir, Michael L. Patton shares stories of his challenging childhood. It is the story of his determination and struggle to overcome growing up with an alcoholic, abusive father.
The author paints a heartwarming and terrifying picture while sharing hard-earned lessons in life. He instinctively searches for guidance outside of the chaos, finding positive mentors, and promising himself that life can be different, even while witnessing physical and mental abuse at the hands of his father. Sweet stories of childhood innocence help balance his father’s outbursts and violence to make this memoir the triumph that it is.
As the last surviving member of his family, he offers his family’s tragic story before it’s lost forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mystery writer Patton (Death and the Devil's Revenge) makes his nonfiction debut with an unflinching examination of his tumultuous childhood. In anecdotes both hopeful and dire, Patton recounts growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father, and his own attempts to escape the cycle of abuse as an adult. "There is no yardstick for measuring the depth of the scars when your beatings begin as a baby," he begins, setting the stage for an unvarnished, hyperdetailed account of his early years in West Virginia as the youngest of four children. He renders his first experience crashing a bicycle and the first time he saw his father hit his mother with equal intensity. Though the bulk of the narrative covers Patton's coming-of-age, the most powerful chapters concern his adulthood, during which Patton grappled with the traumas his father suffered before Patton was born. Ultimately, he manages to extend hard-won empathy to his tormentor long after he'd died of a heart attack. Though occasionally long-winded, Patton is a forceful writer, bestowing his harrowing narrative with page-turning momentum. Readers looking to heal their own family trauma will find comfort here. (Self-published)
