Lab Rat: A Reckoning

The system called him a lab rat. He wrote a book to prove he was a hero.

Lab Rat: A Reckoning is James E. Heldt’s defiant memoir of surviving at the intersection of abuse, illness, and institutional betrayal. From the shadow of the AIDS crisis to the isolation of COVID-19, and from medical negligence to family cruelty, Heldt confronts the systems that tried to break him—and the people who tried to silence him.

Told with raw honesty and a poet’s precision, this memoir transforms decades of trauma into a battle cry for anyone who has ever been dismissed, doubted, or denied their own truth. Heldt doesn’t just recount survival; he demands a reckoning. He refuses to disappear. He refuses to be rewritten.

This is for anyone who has been called a liar by someone too weak to face the truth.

The Color Edition features Heldt’s original artwork—visual testaments of resilience that echo the book’s journey from wreckage to light, and from silence to a voice that cannot be ignored.