Find a Safe Place: A True-Life Drama of Adventure and Survival - Hardcover

Hayes, E. Kent; Lazzarino, Alex

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0070367825 ISBN 13: 9780070367821

Publisher: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1984

Synopsis

Despite the fuzzy underpinnings of this ""dramatization"" of the story of four chance reform-school boys (""actual case histories,"" supplemented by ""composites""), Lazzarino and Hayes offer an unusual closeup of the lives of children we throw in jail ""because they have no adults to care for them."" The scene is Clearwater [Nebraska] Boys' Industrial School, an institution designed for hard-core delinquents, where in 1963 there arrived: Matt, a 14-year-old Wyoming ranchhand's son, who got into minor trouble with the law after his father's death left him orphaned; John, a bright black teenager (""My mama left me, and the state figured I'd end up here sooner or later anyway, so they greased the skids and shipped me straight. It was all legal. . .""); Ralph, an obese 15-year-old mute who, for years, had been erroneously classified as profoundly retarded; and Tony, a streetwise black ten-year-old who had acted as mother's pimp. This unlikely group stuck together as friends: their ""determination to survive and capacity to adapt to a system that. . . rendered them helpless"" pulled them through.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill Book Company
• Publication date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0070367825
• ISBN 13: 9780070367821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 329