From the author of Sunday Times bestsellers One Child and Ghost Girl comes a heartbreaking story of one teacher's determination to turn a chaotic group of damaged children into a family.They were all just «somebody else's kids» – four problem children placed in Torey Hayden's class because nobody knew what else to do with them. They were a motley group of kids in great pain: a small boy who echoed other people's words and repeated weather forecast; a beautiful seven-year-old girl brain damaged by savage parental beatings; an angry ten-year-old who had watched his stepmother murder his father; a shy twelve-year-old who had been cast out of Catholic school when she became pregnant. But they shared one thing in common: a remarkable teacher who would never stop caring – and who would share with them the love and understanding they had never known to help them become a family.
From the author of the phenomenal Sunday Times bestsellers ‘One Child’ and ‘Ghost Girl’, comes a startling and poignant memoir of three people's victimisation and abuse – and their heartbreaking but ultimately successful steps to recovery, with the help of Torey Hayden, an extraordinary teacher.Two children trapped in a prison of silence and a woman suffering in the twilight of her years – these are the cases that would test the extraordinary courage, compassion and skill of Torey Hayden and ultimately reaffirm her faith in the indomitable strength of the human spirit.While working in the children’s psychiatric ward of a large hospital, Torey was introduced to seven-year-old Cassandra, a child who had been kidnapped by her father and was found dirty, starving and picking though rubbish bins to survive. She refused to speak, so Torey could only imagine what she’d been through. Drake, by contrast, was a charismatic four-year-old who managed to participate fully in his pre-school class without uttering a single word. Then, there was Gerda, eighty-two, who had suffered a massive stroke and was unwilling to engage in conversation with anyone. Although Torey had never worked with adults, she agreed to help when all other efforts had failed.
A dramatic and remarkable narrative of an extraordinary teacher's determination, from the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers ‘The Tiger's Child’ and ‘One Child’.Torey Hayden faced six emotionally troubled kids no other teacher could handle – three recent arrivals from battle-torn Northern Ireland, badly traumatised by the horrors of war; an eleven-year-old boy, who only knew life inside an institution; an excitable girl, aggressive and sexually precocious at the age of eight; and seven-year-old Leslie, perhaps the most hopeless of all, unresponsive and unable to speak. But Torey's most daunting challenge turns out to be Leslie's mother, a stunning young doctor who soon discovers that she needs Torey's love and help just as much as the children.‘Just Another Kid’ is a beautiful illustration of nurturing concern, not only for a few emotionally disturbed children, but for one woman facing a personal battle.
From bestselling author Torey Hayden comes a moving novel of loss and redemption.Abundance, Montana, once a lively mining town in the days of the wild west, is now not much more than a ghost town. Local girl, Dixie, a struggling single mother who has just lost her baby, tries to make ends meet while her feckless boyfriend Billy drifts from one job to another, always believing his next moneymaking scheme will be the winner.Above them in the magnificent mountains surrounding Abundance, jaded Hollywood actor Spencer Scott conceals himself from the paparazzi on the ranch that has been his pristine sanctuary until the arrival of his obnoxious, nine-year-old son.Then Billy puts into motion a plan almost too appalling to contemplate, and from which there is no escape. As all four are forced to confront the brutal reality of the Montana mountains, so too are they forced to face their damaged lives in this poignant novel.
From the author of Sunday Times bestsellers One Child and Ghost Girl comes a heartbreaking story of a boy trapped in silence and the teacher who rescued him.When special education teacher Torey Hayden first met fifteen-year-old Kevin, he was barricaded under a table. Desperately afraid of the world around him, he hadn’t spoken a word in eight years. He was considered hopeless, incurable.But Hayden refused to believe it, though she realised it might well take a miracle to break through the walls he had built around himself. With unwavering devotion and gentle, patient love, she set out to free him – and slowly uncovered a shocking violent history and a terrible secret that an unfeeling bureaucracy had simply filed away and forgotten.Torey refused to give up on this tragic “lost case.” For a trapped and frightened boy desperately needed her help – and she knew in her heart she could not rest easy until she had rescued him from the darkness.
A stunning and poignant account of an extraordinary teacher's determination never to abandon a child in need from the internationally bestselling author of ‘One Child’ and No. 1 bestseller ‘Ghost Girl’.Seven-year-old Venus Fox never spoke, never listened, never even acknowledged the presence of another human being in the room with her. Yet an accidental playground 'bump' would release a rage frightening to behold.The school year that followed would prove to be one of the most trying, perplexing, and ultimately rewarding of Torey's career, as she struggled to reach a silent child in obvious pain. It would be a strenuous journey beset by seemingly insurmountable obstacles and darkened by truly terrible revelations. Yet encouraged by sometimes small, sometimes dazzling breakthroughs, as a dedicated teacher, Torey remained committed to helping a 'hopeless' girl, and patiently and lovingly leading her toward the light of a new day.