O Give Me a Home: An Orphan's Story

Book excerpt: An old man visits a closed and decaying building which he remembers entering some sixty years earlier as a small, frightened nine-year-old. He then mines those distantmemories for this stark recounting of growing up in a large, military orphanage. He tells of newkie lessons perhaps too well-learned and a kiddie dormitory perhaps too well-ordered; of violent daytime battles and innocent nighttime rendezvous; of a happy-go-lucky garbage man and a not so lucky marksman; of unconsummated first love and an unexpected last message. These memories, and many more, are flanked by two sad goodbyes, one wistful and one anguished, but each demarcating a decisive fork in life's road. Finally, in a dramatic epilogue, former classmates return for the annual orphan's reunion and gather in an off-campus bar to revel and reminisce.