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Hyde’s vulnerable, honest account of spending twenty years within numerous jails, prisons, and rehabilitation centers details a sobering life story wherein the author comes to know God through “signs” from his deceased child, Kyle. Beginning with his 1960s upstate New York childhood, Hyde shares tales of military service, medical troubles, sports, summer farm work, scrappy fights in school, and eventual alcohol dependence from an early age. Drunken high-speed chases were part and parcel of an “addiction to the rush that came with it all,” as Hyde writes. After college, his second son, Kyle, was born, troubled from the beginning with life-threatening medical issues. Kyle’s untimely death accelerated the writer’s descent into further chaos, which was crime-ridden and fueled by addiction. As he began to find pennies in unusual places, Hyde knew that Kyle—who loved carrying his big bag of pennies as an infant—was sending him messages of love and faith from heaven.
The author’s remarkable attention to detail within these pages is notable. So, too, is Hyde’s unfettered dedication to not holding back in sharing often uncomfortable truths about the choices made and the resultant downward direction of his life story over decades. With an extremely candid autobiographical approach, the memoir is both a story of one man’s fall and eventual return to grace and also an attempt to reach others in hopes of making a positive difference. Hyde’s story is touching, to be sure, but what raises this title above average is his commitment to unguarded, transparent storytelling, inclusive of the good, the bad, and the ugly. His experiences of healing faith, overcoming intense trauma, and the heavenly promise in finding Kyle’s pennies might well leave many a reader teary-eyed.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review