Cyndy Drew Etler
Autore di Dead Inside: A True Story
Sull'Autore
Opere di Cyndy Drew Etler
Etichette
Informazioni generali
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Utenti
Recensioni
Premi e riconoscimenti
Statistiche
- Opere
- 3
- Utenti
- 95
- Popolarità
- #197,646
- Voto
- 3.6
- Recensioni
- 3
- ISBN
- 12
When she visited Bridgeport with her best friend, she met and hung out with some guys. And she had a chance to share some weed, which she had never tried before. She didn't especially like it. Cyndy liked to be in control of herself.
One reason Cyndy took advantage of opportunities to stay overnight was that she did not get along with her mother's boyfriend, Jacque. It's clear he wants her out. Wants her mom to himself. So he takes advantage of any chance to attack her, verbally and physically, and her mother does not stop him.
Thus Cyndi takes off at the age of 13. She camps out at a friend's house, and later finds other places. Ultimately, though, she knows she can't continue on her own. Her mother thinks the same thing, except she has a place in mind.
Cyndi is placed in a private boarding school. It's not what she thought it was. It's a place called Straight, Inc, and is designed for young people with drug problems. Only Cyndi doesn't have a drug problem. It doesn't matter because nobody believes her. And thus begins her journey into a kind of hell.
The activities in Straight are intended to humiliate the teens, so much so that they want to be part of the "good ones", the teens on higher levels. Yet a bad moment, a bad decision, can cause a teen at the top level, about to "graduate", to come crashing down and having to start all over.
Interestingly, in spite of the cruelty and lack of trust, when Cyndi is finally released she has bought all of the stories the staff has been telling her over the many long months. She believes she has been saved.
The organization evolved from a similar organization and, when threatened, morphed into yet another one. So such organizations still exist and are rarely challenged. Writing this book was Cyndi's way of exposing the hypocrisy and outright fraud, in hopes that others might be saved from it.
It's an interesting book. Etler is an intelligent, literate person, but she writes, for the most part, like an average young teen. At times the voice bothered me because it clearly wasn't her own, but it probably had been, to some extent, when she was 13 and 14. The voice must resonate with other teens as well, and the book is labeled "young adult".
Worth a read to find out the strange ways of these organizations. It's short and easy to read, so could be a good gift to a young person as well.… (altro)