A Man Named Dave

Following A CHILD CALLED "IT" and THE LOST BOY, Dave Pelzer's latest book in the trilogy, A MAN NAMED DAVE, is his journey from youth to manhood. A powerful testimony to the resilience of the human spirit, A MAN NAMED DAVE details some of Dave's early childhood experiences as the son of a brutal, alcoholic mother. He knows his mother under many guises: the preferred Mommy but, more often, The Mother. He is known as "the boy" or "it" rather than by his name. She tortures him until lies told to school personnel no longer are believable --- he is rescued and placed into foster care at the age of 12. The background childhood experiences reveal Dave's character traits as an adolescent and young man. The kind couple Dave treats as parents give him ample space to study these lessons from his past and to learn from them. It is when his father is dying of cancer that Dave attempts to reestablish contact with the man. The son's lifelong wish is to become a firefighter in the steps of his father. To accomplish that dream, Dave joins the Air Force, where he overcomes obstacles that would stop an ordinary man. But his determination pulls him past these obstacles in his quest for recognition. He becomes an in-flight fueling technician for the Air Force, a highly regarded job and, in the course of his career, he meets his first love. A rush into marriage proves disastrous, but his son, Stephen, is the result of that union. Dave's inability to trust another person is a partial reason for the failure of his marriage --- until he can finally come to terms with the facts of his childhood, he cannot give total trust to any relationship. Dave spends countless hours with his dying father, trying to untangle in his mind the web of broken family relationships. He attempts to sort out the whys of his mother's sad existence by deepening his ties to his father, but those answers do not unfold during this time. Much later,