“Confidentiality means what’s said in this room stays in this room.” He stops a second, looking at me, close. Are you familiar with the rules of confidentiality?” I don’t bother answering. “We’ll meet at this time for forty-five minutes every Tuesday and Thursday.” I keep my back right up on the door. “You can sit anywhere.” He doesn’t have any tennis balls or messed-up eyeglasses or an attitude like those other ones back at Applegate. “I’ll be your therapist while you’re here at Ridgeway.” He drops his arm like it’s no big thing and dumps his skinny butt in a chair behind his desk. B.” He holds out his hand, but I play like I don’t even see it. So I take their medicine and walk around in socks the way they make you, and stay real quiet. “I need a lighter,” I tell her, and she goes. “You mean, thank you for caring,” she says. “Step off,” I tell this nurse when she tries to get me to eat. (Feb.YOU HAVE TO watch what you say here because everything you say means something and somebody’s always telling you what you mean. A powerful story of forgiveness-both of oneself and of others. Harper in the nursing home, her walls are covered with angels she painted to look like him.

For example, when America works up the courage to visit Mrs. Harper is always telling America, there's 'real meaning in the small things,' and the author's ability to capture so much emotion in the details makes this book remarkable. Harper's, her half-brother repeatedly molests him and he flees to New York City again). The obstacles in his life seem insurmountable (after he returns to Mrs. His gradual progress through therapy is especially well orchestrated. Harper's phone number everywhere so that he won't forget it), his sense of the poetic and even his kindness. America is not a saint, but readers see glimmers of his intelligence (one heartbreaking series of scenes shows five-year-old America, unable to find a working telephone, writing Mrs. Harper, he's behind in school, swears constantly and has internalized the belief that he's bad. When the police find him years later and return him to Mrs. Harper, the nanny of a rich white foster family who gave him up 'after he started turning his color.' The weekend before he starts kindergarten, he visits his birth mother in New York City, and she abandons him in a seedy apartment with his two young brothers.

Born to a crack addict mother, America was raised by kindly Mrs. Frank's ( Life Is Funny) well-crafted and moving story begins with a teenage America in a treatment facility after a suicide attempt and alternates between the present-mostly his therapy sessions with Dr.

America by E.R. Frank