Leaving Lila

William Baker was six years old in 1931 when his mother left him at an orphanage, promising to return for him when she was settled in a new home. But years passed, and she virtually vanished from his life. At age fifteen, Baker unceremoniously “graduated” to a boys’ home, where orphans were forced to do hard labor and sometimes abused.


Leaving Lila is the true story of Baker’s escape from “The Home.” With his meager possessions stuffed into a Boy Scout knapsack, Baker lived by wits and determination, on the road in search of his mother and a better life.


Baker skillfully crafts a memoir that is moving, suspenseful, and sometimes shocking. From the rare perspective of a ninety-year-old who experienced America’s underbelly in the 1940s, Leaving Lila is a firsthand account of a frightened boy who escaped horror only to find more trouble. But along the way, he also found love in encounters so intense they were indelibly imprinted upon his memory.