Why am I passionate about this?
My first memoir, Overlay, has been called “the very best teenage suicide prevention tool ever created” for which I am eternally grateful. I've been told that it's a miracle I survived my childhood at all, but I don't take credit or satisfaction in that statement. Instead, I've aspired to understand what it is that gives some of us the grit that allows us to power through the unfathomable. Voraciously reading similar stories from my fellow authors continues to inform me that we all have the power to push through the pain of a disadvantaged childhood. Whether it's an inner light, luck, fate, a higher power or some combination of some or all of the above, I don't know. I do know that the children like me who grew up to tell their story with the hope of helping others deserve a read. And sometimes, a good cry.
Marlayna's book list on surviving traumatic childhoods
Why did Marlayna love this book?
You think you had a tough childhood? Meet Tim Green. Born blue into an uneducated, poor, and incestuous family in 1950s Ohio, it's a wonder this child lived at all. However, grit and forces of luck arrived to meet Tim when he needed help. Luck involved the right policemen, care workers, social workers, and foster parents. Grit involved the resolve of Tim himself.
Like Frank McCourt, Tim Green learned early to look on the bright side of life. You'll read the most shocking things you can imagine in this book that will leave you shaking your head at the things people will do. But Tim maintained the idea that not only was he worth something, but so was everyone around him. He learned how to forgive, and that was his rocky path to the fabulous life he lives today. This book is LGBTQ positive.
1 author picked Another Hill and Sometimes a Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
"This is a book that should be read while alone, to your friends, to a congregation of survivors of abuse – in other words, it should be read by everyone. Sensitive and honest, gain a new perspective on being alive by infusing Tim’s words into your mind. Highly recommended." Hall of Fame Top 50 Reviewer, Grady Harp
ANOTHER HILL AND SOMETIMES A MOUNTAIN is the powerful testimony of Tim Green's determination to rise above his beginnings ... despite the sting of abandonment and the dark secrets surrounding his birth family. In his painful yet at times wry memoir, Green recounts…