Spanish Peaks Library District

In 1948, Cono Dennis boards a train to Temple, Texas. It is the same place he escaped at age 14, when yet another act of violence by his father finally pushed him over the edge. Now, Cono is no longer that skinny, tow-headed, battered kid. At eighteen years old, he is Master Sergeant at Lackland Army Air Force Base, a boxer, and the physical training instructor responsible for over 10,000 men. An invitation from his father to return to Temple and...

"'I can't write a story about myself as the sad, quiet child of two drug addicts. That's not how it was, even when it was. To me, sleeping in the car was normal. Better, it was comfy and fun. I loved my bed made of clothes inside a trash bag that I sank into slowly like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family movie … I loved the motels and their swimming pools and trashy daytime TV channels … Nobody could tell us what to do.' Brittany Means's childhood...

Lenny Duncan's memoir about growing up Black and queer in the United States. He recounts his experiences hitchhiking across the country, spending tim in solitary confinement, battling addiction, and discovering a deep faith.

"In this richly depicted story, told in vignettes relative to markers of age and experience, Patricia Eagle reveals the heartbreak and destruction of her sexual abuse, from age four to thirteen, by her father. A victim of her father's anger and her mother's complacency with his abusive behavior, Eagle uses dissociation and numbing in response to the abuse, and as a way to block her own sense of self. How does a child confused by episodes of abuse...