For fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, comes mystery author Toby Neal\'s personal story of surviving a Wild childhood in paradise.
Kirkus Reviews.
An affecting and riveting chronicle of a singular childhood that evokes the contradictions of hippie utopian ideals in an unspoiled Hawaiian landscape long since lost.
I might be Growing up Wild in Hawaii, but I have dreams I\'m going to reach, no matter how crazy things get.
No matter how many bullies beat me up for the color of my skin.
No matter how many times I change schools...or don\'t go to school at all.
No matter how often we run out of food.
I will make a different life for myself someday if I keep up my grades no matter what happens.
But I\'m smart.
What I want doesn\'t matter.
I\'m just their red-headed, mouthy, oldest kid.
Addicted to Kauai\'s beauty, to drugs, to surfing, to living a life according to their own rules out from under their high-achieving parents\' judgmental eyes.
But Mom and Pop are addicted.
Standing in front of the tent in my nightgown, clinging to my sister as we face the tractor, I know my own truth: I just want to be normal.
The cockroaches 1/2leave rainbow colors all over everything from eating the crayons we left outside the tent, and now a tractor is coming to scrape our camp into the river.
Sure, Kauai\'s beautiful, with empty beaches, drip-castle mountains, and perfect surf...but we\'ve been camping for six months, eating boiled chicken feed for breakfast, and wearing camouflage clothes so no one sees us trespassing in our jungle hideout.
We live in a place everyone calls paradise.
We\'re just camping in the jungle on Kauai...
We never call it homeless.
For fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, comes mystery author Toby Neal\'s personal story of surviving a Wild childhood in paradise
