"With this stunning memoir, David Small takes readers on an unforgettable journey into the dark heart of his tumultuous childhood in 1950s Detroit. At 14, he awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover his throat had been slashed and one of his vocal chords removed, leaving him a virtual mute. No one had told him that it was cancer and he was expected to die. A gripping and ultimately redemptive story of a man's struggle to understand the past and reclaim his voice"