Crawling Out of My Skin

About the Book

Alton tells the story of a male survivor of sexual abuse standing up and telling his story. He journeys through mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness and prostitution with such stark honesty that you often wonder how the child survived. He lives as an enemy in the house of his father. His passive-aggressive mother chooses bad over worse, suffers through her own memories of repetitive rape and abandoned dreams. Crawling Out of My Skin is a brutal book traveling about the country from Seattle, Washington to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, visiting several small towns in Oklahoma and Eastern Washington, chasing the golden dream of growing up, illustrating the boredom and degradation of living on the streets, begging, or hustling for money to get loaded enough to sleep through the night after choking down food from dumpsters.

About the Author

William L. Alton grew up in Oklahoma and Eastern Washington. Crawling Out of My Skin is his first book. He has written a number of plays that have been produced by a theater company he helped found in 1989. His poetry and fiction has appeared in The Pacific Review. Currently, he is working as a teacher and living with his wife and three sons in Portland, Oregon.