Based on a true story, Some Way Home is the account of the handling and healing of Dylan, a prototypical foster child. He comes into this world a fairly anonymous character and is soon sent wandering through the government's child protection agencies in search of a home. He lacks a stable family to hold, care, or protect him; so early on, he is subjected to several, significant traumas of abuse and abandonment. He suffers but strives to emotionally survive until his mental health is challenged to the brink of psychosis.
After Dylan's first short stay in foster care, he and his brother move in with their Aunt Patti, who wishes to adopt them. There, Dylan and Patti fall in love. Unfortunately, Patti is also living with her boyfriend, Bruce, who becomes the "bad daddy". Eventually, after various episodes of brutality and loss, Dylan is permanently removed from Patti and placed into the foster care system again. The story continues as Dylan's social worker, Adam McDonnell, tries to heal Dylan's hurt and place him into a safe environment.
However, reality intervenes in the appearance of abnormal behaviors that surface when a child is isolated, beaten and confronted by true rejection. Distress and the will to survive generate the little boy's desire to earn some value in society. Even after a complete deterioration in a disastrous second placement, his third placement brings new hope when Dylan learns of love again. But this positive period rapidly slips away with an increase in Dylan's impulsive and destructive behaviors that define him as a severe management problem. A permanent placement, an adoptive home, is Dylan's only hope but opportunities look bleak due to the systemic inadequacies of agency work. But with luck and manipulation, Adam finds adoptive parents for Dylan. They are Jacob and Martha Ebonite. However, most of Dylan's history is not divulged to them due to Adam's fear that they may back out if they knew the challenges that accompany Dylan.
The trials of another transition hit hard for both Dylan and his trusting, naive new parents. The book continues by describing the distress that they all experience while attempting to merge into a real family. This process takes long but the Ebonite’s endure to become united with Dylan in a truly "forever family". Even though they experience both Dylan’s victories and the reappearance of emotional scars at the different stages in his development, the family is united beyond external understanding or repercussions.
Some Way Home spans from Dylan’s birth to his fifteenth year and is told in two parts. The first part, from birth to five years old, depicts how Dylan barely survives the government’s protective services and is narrated by Adam McDonnell, his social worker/case manager. Part two is told by Dylan’s adoptive father, Jacob Ebonite. This is a passionate account of raising, loving, and trying to heal a severely injured child. It takes the reader through the highs of victory and the inevitable emotional devastations along the way. In the end, the reader is left with the hope of a mystifying victory obtained through enduring compassion.
I am a Special Education Teacher and a parent, and this book was recommended to me. I could not put it down. With 2 little boys (2 and 4) I don’t get time to read, but I made time to read this. Mr. Kenney captured the struggles of parenthood, he told what really goes on in every home, all the “stuff” that doesn't get talked about. Nobody's perfect, we are all learning how to raise children, and Mr. Kenney showed that in this book.
I applaud his determination to stay with this little boy, and his ability to take a kid that really could have continued the cycle of abuse, and change him into a productive part of society. I personally don’t know if I could have handled it.
I high recommend this book, and realize that no parent is perfect, but we all doing our best to raise our children.
David J Kenney is listed as the primary author of this extraordinary book and his wife Barbara Kenney is listed as a contributor. What results from this collaboration is a book that is one of the more compelling dramas about lost children - and it is true. David has elected to mold this true story by relating it to myth and memoir added as appendices at the end of the book. While these are interesting and valid intellectually, the impact of the actual history of Dylan easily stands alone as a superlative book by a psychologist cum author.
The Book traces the life of a child unwanted at birth who was passed through foster homes with varying degrees of abuse and isolation, living with both distant relatives whose marriages were rocky at best as well as simply inadequate `foster homes', including the intervention of social worker Adam McDonnell who tried to find solace and protection for the psychologically disintegrating Dylan until Dylan was ultimately placed with adoptive parents.
A very brief book description is on the book's back cover and form that the following is shared: `SOME WAY HOME spans from Dylan's birth to his fifteenth year and is told in two parts. The first part, from birth to five years old, depicts how Dylan barely survives the government's protective services and is narrated by Adam McDonnell, his social worker/case manager. Part two is told by Dylan's adoptive father, Jacob Ebonite. This is a passionate account of raising, loving, and trying to heal a severely injured child. It takes the reader through the highs of victory and the inevitable emotional devastation along the way. In the end, the reader is left with the hope of a mystifying victory obtained through enduring compassion.
I met the authors, David and Barbara Kenney, for the first time last night at a local writers' meeting, where we usually discuss the business of writing. I told them my fiction novel REICHOLD STREET had a lot of the things in it...family dysfunction, bullying, abuse, isolation, etc. that they described in telling us about their book, SOME WAY HOME. So we exchanged books at the end of the meeting.
Now, I read a lot, but it's almost always fiction and, quite frankly, I expected to find this a dull, fact-filled treatise that would be hard for me to say something good about, since it isn't the kind of book I would normally choose to read. However, I was pleasantly surprised.
The fact that it's based on a true story makes the impact of the actual history of Dylan all the more powerful. This is indeed a passionate account of raising, loving, and trying to heal a child with severe emotional and physical injuries. It takes the reader through the highs experienced in tiny victories and makes all too clear the emotional devastation of dealing with the low points.
Even in a story of abuse and neglect, the reader is left understanding the hope that is possible through enduring compassion. It was such an enthralling story that I read it all the way through in one sitting this morning. This is a story everyone should hear. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING.
