T.J. Richards Buggy

Annotation

Whether its physical or emotional mistreatment, neglect, or sexual molestation, the social impact of child abuse in America ultimately damages the core development of youththe emotional underpinning in the lives of young children growing up. Buggy is a hard reada blend of several fact-based events witnessed by the author during his early teenage years in the mid-1950s while growing up in a government housing project in Euclid, Ohio. Although the generational story is framed around three fictitious lives, including Tony, son of the abusive, mean-spirited Louie Bugno, himself a victim of adolescent abuse, the account of their livestold through their meeting in a hospital where Louie is dying of cancerserves as a reminder to all of us that child abuse exists. Let us never forget how much it weakens, undermines, and demoralizes the young lives it touches.