Ragged Run

It’s the early 1960s in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Lincoln Park, Chicago. Nine-year-old Barnaby Dinges and older brother, Casey, are living a charmed childhood with their stylish mom, Ricka, who has the soul of a great writer; and cool dad, Chuck, a hot-shot advertising exec with a flair for slogans that would make Mad Men’s Don Draper envious. In what seems like the span of a minute, the rug is pulled out from under the two boys as trouble brews on the horizon. That trouble would rob Barnaby and Casey of both parents within two years, but it wouldn’t stop there. Their grave losses would bring the siblings trials and despair spanning the next decade, in the form of a loveless foster family who challenged both Barnaby and Casey to a breaking point...and eventually, to fight back with everything they had. Ragged Run is a memoir about survival, hope, and the determination to make it through tomorrow. With insight and humor, and aided by Ricka’s journal (found a decade after her death), Barnaby recounts his journey from painful loss, to impermanent hopelessness, to true happiness. The result is a moving tribute to his family, one that will speak to anyone who has experienced their own ragged run through the often trying streets of life.