Murphy's Boy

Torey Hayden

Feb 2018 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this eBook

When Torey Hayden first met fifteen-year-old Kevin, he was barricaded under a table. Desperately afraid of the world around him, he hadn’t spoken a word in eight years. He was considered hopeless, incurable, but Hayden refused to believe it. With unwavering devotion and gentle, patient love, she set out to free him—and slowly uncovered a shocking, violent history and a terrible secret that an unfeeling bureaucracy had simply filed away and forgotten. But she never gave up on this tragic “lost case.” For a trapped and frightened boy desperately needed her help—and she knew in her heart she could not rest easy until she had rescued him from the darkness.

Ratings and reviews

I'm not too keen on her choice of words to describe him: loser, ugly etc . How she talked about his acne scars and his odor.... just something about how she described him and another child made me highly uncomfortable.

I remember reading part of an excerpt of this book in Reader's Digest when I was a kid and it has haunted me forever because I wasn't allowed to finish it. I just recently had a chance to read the entire book (which I devoured in a couple of days) and it was such a relief to know that Kevin got something of a happy ending. This was a very emotional but captivating read.

I've read five books by Torey Hayden and each is unique and different. This was gripping and I couldn't put the book down.

About the author

Torey Hayden is an educational psychologist and a former special education teacher who since 1979 has chronicled her struggles in the classroom in a succession of bestselling books. She lives and writes in the U.K.