A deaf widow leaves her eight-year-old son at an orphanage, hoping he'll find a better life than she can provide on a sweatshop paycheck. She dreams that Girard College, a boarding school for fatherless boys, will be his Camelot. What she doesn't know is that child abuse, anti-Semitism, pedophilia, and bullying await him. And he doesn't know whether his mother is ever coming back, or if he'll have to run away. Boarding School Bastard is the moving memoir of a frightening yet fascinating childhood, spent in a historic Philadelphia orphanage from 1962 to 1970. Leavening tragedy with humor and humanity, Boarding School Bastard reveals a world we'd prefer to avoid but is too riveting to ignore.