Finding Courage in Cabin 5

A memoir about community and the people who teach us what it means to belong.

In Cabin 5, a boy who doesn't speak puts a hand on his counselor's cheek and says one word: love. Years later in a hospital room, that same man is a father when his daughter lifts her hand to his face and says it too.

For thirty years, Dan Mathews has worked among children set apart from ordinary life by something they did not choose: kids with cancer, with disabilities, or who carry the loneliness of being a child the world treats as different. As a leader at Camp Twin Lakes and the father of a daughter with a rare disability, he has learned that the people we're quickest to look past often have the most to teach us. The people Mathews set out to serve-campers, staff, his own daughter-turned out to be the ones who taught him how to belong.

Finding Courage in Cabin 5 is a memoir about building community, and about what it gives back. These are stories of hope and loss, frustration and connection. His hope is simple: that you'll close the book and go improve the lives of those around you, in your own little corner of the world.