Nobody's Child: The Stirring True Story of an Unwanted Boy Who Found Hope

This memoir accurately conjures up a tragic picture of a youngster forsaken by family and at the mercy of the oft-inept British social services. Robinson tells his life story with an almost casual, perfunctory tone that seems at odds with his desperately painful childhood. Robinson, the youngest of eight children, was born in Yorkshire to a father who was frequently in prison and an alcoholic mother who never saw him again following his removal from her care at four months of age. Robinson narrates the abuse he suffered in a foster home where he was locked in an attic for wetting his bed, forced to eat mustard sandwiches and resorted to urinating in an old tin. Trouble and neglect haunted him through early adolescence and into his young adult years as he searched for acceptance and love. At a point of despondency, Robinson accepted an invitation to a church meeting and there prayed to Jesus for forgiveness of his sins. The rough-and-tumble life Robinson survived is plainly not the primary point of this hope-filled retelling; now involved full-time in a bus ministry for needy youth, he has gone full circle since his conversion to Christianity, giving back to young people as troubled as he once was. Although the story is told without polish or elegance, it is powerfully compelling. (July )