If Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" and Dave Pelzer's "A Child Called It" moved you, you will forever be changed by the candid, if shockingly raw, portrait of survival painted in "Mom, Dad, Lawrence and Me" by new memoirist Donald Haugen. Forever conscious of how mothers, fathers and their children should respond to one another, Haugen considers how it is his family was torn apart by divorce, religious prejudice, and poverty. As if confirming how it is any of us endure childhood, Haugen reveals the physical, mental, and sexual abuse he suffered in his. He recounts how his mother made him...

With an exacting, hauntingly simple prose, famed American sculptor, poet, and memoirist Donald Haugen revisits his childhood in "The Valley of Innocence Lost," a remarkable and splendid portrait of a child's vulnerability and resilience. As a small boy, Donnie Haugen is fully indoctrinated into the Roman Catholic Church and he believes God is omnipotent and omnipresent. However, he is not blind to the sins of his mother and father, or the world around him. So Donnie prays for things to get better. It is this faith that fuels Donnie's anxiety and his fears are fanned into flames by the...