David Pelzer's "The Lost Boy": surviving foster care and childhood abuse

Lost Boy by David Pelzer is an account of the author's life from the age of 12 to 18, when he lived in foster homes after leaving his family because they abused him. This book is well written, but it is hard to read because the boy suffers so much abuse from his mother, and then searches for love because he does not have a real family, and keeps getting moved around from foster home to foster home. During the six years the book covers, the boy lives in ten different foster homes, and he is often afraid of going back to his mother, who is an alcoholic who beats and abuses him. He reacts by stealing, turning cold and mean, and even going to a juvenile detention center. He feels like an outsider, and tries to impress other kids by lying and generally acting out. He has many troubles, but when he turns 18, he joins the Air Force, and makes his life really matter. He wrote this book to help show the problem of child abuse.

This book is even harder to read because it is a true story, and the reader knows that from the start. It is hard to understand how a mother could be so cruel to her son, and how he managed to survive the abuse. The book is graphic when it talks about the mother's abuse, and sometimes uses foul language to get its point across. That is not the strength of the book, it just adds to the detail of the writing. The strength of the book is how the writer, who is also the young boy in the story, writes about his experiences with so much detail and emotion. It is clear this was a hard time in his life, and he remembers it with anger and fear, but he can write about it because he survived, and made something out of his life. His mother did not win, and that is one of the most important lessons in this story.