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I wish I could have met or spoke with Ken Steele in person. To have survived all that suffering so long, at last finding the medicine that worked for him, and then be able to teach us what life was like for him and how he endured... I am hoping for the best of hope for our own child who suffers with similar problems... This is one of the best books I have read so far... I would love to have been able to talk to him directly get inside information on how to best help our child have the best life he wants and deserves to have inspite of this devastating illness.. This book gives an inside look and so many helpful ideas on ways to cope with this illness for the patient and family.... to become an advocate for people with this illness to help them get the help they need and maybe someday to even speak for themselves as Ken has done so well in this book...

This book is a real-life horror story. It is hard to imagine someone surviving 32 years of the most severe mental illness. I have my own mental illness problem (manic depression), but it's not the everyday nightmare that Ken Steele faced. Even though Steele eventually found the right medication and the voices stopped tormenting him, he didn't have long to enjoy his new life. Autobiographies of mentally ill people don't get much better than this.

On an October night in 1962, the voices had arrived without a warning. Ken Steele was only fourteen years old. The voices told him to kill himself, that the world would be better off without him and that he was no good at all. Ken had been listening to the radio in his home in Connecticut and began to think he was in a nightmare but realized he was not asleep. He knew he could not tell his parents because he was already a big enough disappointment to them. Ken's father wanted him to play baseball and become a professional, Ken wanted to read and write. His parents were in denial and Ken was in and out of hospitals being diagnosed with schizophrenia. When he turned eighteen he moved to New York alone and began a publishing job. Ken was suicidal and had attempted many times to set himself afire, hang himself or jump off of a tall building. Finally Ken had been checked into Manhattan Psychiatric Center, where they evaluated and tried to help Ken Steele with his mental illness. Ken had spent thirty-two years of torture from inner voices demanding him to kill himself. In this inspiring novel, Ken tells the story of his recovery from schizophrenia, his insanity, paranoia and coping with the out-side world with schizophrenia. Ken Steele still had hope despite his insanity and mental illness; he yearned for a state of sanctuary and wanted to be helped. He died from heart failure on October 7th, 2000 and would have been fifty-two on October 9th.