For fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, comes mystery author Toby Neal’s personal story of surviving a wild childhood in paradise.
We never call it homeless. We’re just “camping” in the jungle on Kauai…
We live in a place everyone calls paradise. Sure, Kauai’s beautiful, with empty beaches, drip-castle mountains, and perfect surf…but we’ve been “camping” for six months, eating boiled … 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. The cockroaches leave 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.
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.
But Mom and Pop are addicted.
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. I’m just their red-headed, mouthy, oldest kid. What I want doesn’t matter.
But I’m smart. I will make a different life for myself someday if I keep up my grades no matter what happens.
No matter how often we run out of food.
No matter how many times I change schools…or don’t go to school at all.
No matter how many bullies beat me up for the color of my skin.
I might be growing up wild in Hawaii, but I have dreams I’m going to reach, no matter how crazy things get.
“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.” ~Kirkus Reviews
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Growing up in the 60’s in Hawaii. Fell in love with Tobi.
This memoir totally took me to a setting and circumstance far from where I grew up. I have so much admiration for the author. She writes from the perspective of a child as she grows into a young woman and tells her story in a matter-of-fact way, while also grabbing my empathy.
Excellent book. The author’s tale of her upbringing in Hawaii is fascinating.
I liked the descriptions of the lovely island. The upheavals in the children’s lives was poignant, and showed the resilience of young people to the whims of their parents.
When a book takes place in an interesting setting that is vividly described, I’m in. I love being transported to another place. Freckled is a wonderful true story about what it was like to grow up with two self-absorbed hippies in Hawaii in the 1970s. The writing style was interesting. The writing becomes more advanced as the protagonist grows up. I loved this book.
Story of survival with parents who were selfish and immature.
As with all memoirs you have to accept this is the authors POV, but there wasn’t much room for error if she was telling it like it was. Emotional material told with descriptive writing and a deep conviction to be forthright and honest, the good and bad. You could feel her emotions coming off the page.
I loved the book. I found the author’s story fascinating and inspiring. It’s one of the better memoirs that I have read.
I could not put this book down. I just had to know what happened to this poor child who tried so hard to be “normal” with very little support for such a thing. I look forward to her next book about a later part of her life.
Just finished Toby Neal’s memoir of growing up wild in Hawaii. Neal says this about memoir “Writing a memoir can be therapeutic, but it’s not therapy. A good memoir is primarily a story for the consumption of others, and ripping open your soft parts, spilling your guts, and then assembling something entertaining out of that mess—well, it’s not for the faint of heart”
She accomplished that. It was all I look for in a memoir. Deep, honest, and ultimately healing.