Boy in the Barn
Journey of Triumph over Horrific Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse, and PTSD
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Boy in the Barn
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Narrated by:
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David Seager
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By:
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Kurt B. Ellis
About this listen
*Trigger and content warning. Please take this seriously!*
*This book contains many graphic examples of foul, offensive, obscene language, child abuse, sexual abuse, brutality, violence, suffering, homophobia, and racism. This book contains mature and adult content. Therefore, it should not be heard by children or minors.*
John grew up in an incredibly narcissistic, dysfunctional family on a farm in southeastern North Carolina during the repressive 1960s. This was the model family to the broader community. His parents were considered pillars of society. Yet, this family held many deep, dark secrets governed by family honor, vanity, and pride. The parents' standing in the community was paramount to everything else. No one–no family member, circumstance, event, or situation–was to shame and embarrass them and get in the way of how they ranked and viewed themselves.
This way of life was ripe for something more insidious. In a calculated and controlled manner, John was sexually abused and groomed to become a sex worker for a satanic cult by his sadistic brother. The sexual abuse began when John was six, and lasted 11 years. The ever-escalating forms of child and sexual abuse seemed to know no limits. During his abuse and afterward, John was controlled, silenced, coerced, and threatened with further violence and death by his abusers.
Often leaning on words of wisdom from his grandfather, John held it together and vowed as a teenager to move away and better himself. This book is about his journey. A lifelong journey to escape from boyhood sexual abuse, his struggles to overcome severe PTSD, his determination to survive, and his steel will to succeed and make something out of himself.
This fiction, based on Kurt B. Ellis's life, follows a boy from his terrible childhood and contains his memories, flashbacks, triggers, and struggles to overcome abuse and trauma.
This inspiring LGBTQIA+ coming-of-age story is about hope, courage, and the resilience of the human spirit.
©2023 Kurt B. Ellis (P)2024 Kurt B. EllisListeners also enjoyed...
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They Called Me Number One
- Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School
- By: Bev Sellars
- Narrated by: Bev Sellars
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story5 out of 5 stars 98
Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shame on Church and State
- By Susie on 08-22-17
By: Bev Sellars
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 682
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 595
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 595
For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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Mercy Among the Children
- A Novel
- By: David Adams Richards
- Narrated by: Bernard Clark
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4 out of 5 stars 45
Sydney Henderson is a truly great man. As a young man, Sydney, believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God, promising never to harm another if the boy's life is spared. In the years that follow, the almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise - at terrible cost to himself and his family. Stunningly beautiful and haunting, scenes from this magisterial novel will remain etched in the mind forever.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Epic story
- By jhar14 on 06-04-22
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West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
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Shattered Dreams
- My Life as a Polygamist's Wife
- By: Irene Spencer
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 479
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 326
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 325
Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in marrying her brother-in-law, Verlan LeBaron, becoming his second wife. When the government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona, Irene and her family fled to Verlan's brothers' Mexican ranch. They lived in squalor and desolate conditions in the Mexican desert with Verlan's six brothers, one sister, and numerous wives and children.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Eye Opening... Difficult Listen... Honest
- By Paul Mullen on 06-24-08
By: Irene Spencer
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 368
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 331
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Story4 out of 5 stars 330
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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Say I'm Dead
- A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love
- By: E. Dolores Johnson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Deeply meaningful important read
- By A.M.Rousseau on 12-21-21
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A Girl Is a Body of Water
- By: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Narrated by: Tovah Ott
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
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3 out of 5 stars
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African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
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The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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My Life as a Rat
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Sadie Alexandru
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 154
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4 out of 5 stars 134
My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heavy Topics & Satisfying Story
- By Oscar on 06-30-19
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The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 13,858
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 12,255
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Story5 out of 5 stars 12,197
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
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American Baby
- A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
- By: Gabrielle Glaser
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur, Gabrielle Glaser, Margaret Katz
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 176
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Story5 out of 5 stars 174
The adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I felt the love of my birth mom...
- By Mary H. on 02-03-21
By: Gabrielle Glaser
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The Undocumented Americans
- By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,028
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 889
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 882
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Raw, heartbreaking - we can do better by others
- By RapaciousReader on 04-11-20
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Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels
- By: Justin Vivian Bond
- Narrated by: Justin Vivian Bond
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Recently hailed as "the greatest cabaret artist of [V's] generation" in The New Yorker, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond makes a brilliant literary debut with this staggeringly candid and hilarious novella-length memoir. With a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and news that V's first lover from childhood has been imprisoned for impersonating an undercover police officer, Bond recalls in vivid detail coming of age as a trans kid. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond was further confused when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly. Their trysts went on for years, and made Bond acutely aware of sexual power and vulnerability. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LGBTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly entertaining.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Justin Vivian Bond Knocks It Out of the Park
- By Susie on 01-15-14
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Dalva
- A Novel
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey, Stacey Glemboski
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born, and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at 45 she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians.
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5 out of 5 stars
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As a woman, I can finally appreciate Jim Harrison with this book.
- By kathryn gray on 09-11-24
By: Jim Harrison
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The Boys in the Bunkhouse
- Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland
- By: Dan Barry
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disabilities and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than 30 years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Our Brothers' Keepers?
- By Gillian on 12-01-16
By: Dan Barry
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Mitka’s Secret
- A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust
- By: Steven W. Brallier, Joel N. Lohr, Lynn G. Beck
- Narrated by: Trevor Thompson
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
This is Mitka’s account of facing the past, confronting his captors, connecting with lost relatives, and finding peace in the rediscovery of his origins. For Mitka, this also meant reclaiming his Jewish heritage - a journey that gave him a new sense of purpose and freedom from the lingering effects of trauma that had filled his life to that point. By the end, Mitka’s Secret is less a story of survival and more one of redemption and transformation - from hidden suffering to abundant joy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This should be a movie!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 09-11-21
By: Steven W. Brallier, and others
What listeners say about Boy in the Barn
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dawn
- 07-21-23
Tragedy at its worst
First, please let me say that I didn't get far into this book. I just couldn't. my heart was breaking in the first chapter. if you have any heart, this will rip it apart. I was hoping to get though because I know despite the odds , he makes it.
I'm so sorry I couldn't do it.
but I do plan to try again in a few months.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 07-20-23
Great book!
Vary honest. The author did not hold back. Shocking details and outstanding story of overcoming hardship and trauma.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Susan Elseman
- 07-10-23
A Story of Survival
This is a horrific story of severe child abuse and it still shocks me that people got away with this behavior without consequences years ago. This author is very brave for sharing this tragic story and I applaud him for sharing it in hopes of helping others know they are not alone. The trigger warnings are serious, so don't take them lightly. I didn't love the narrator but he did a good job.
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