Beamish Boy (I am not my story): A Memoir of Recovery and Awakening

Beamish Boy (I am not my story): A Memoir of Recovery & Awakening by Albert Flynn DeSilver

“. . .A beautifully written memoir. . .poignant and inspirational, comical and terrifying!”

—Kirkus

“I was raised in a clock tower with bats in the belfry.” So begins, Beamish Boy, the harrowing account of Albert Flynn DeSilver’s inspirational journey from suicidal alcoholic to Poet Laureate and beyond. Though growing up in material privilege in suburban Connecticut in the 1970’s and 80’s, Albert finds himself whirling through an emotional wasteland void of love, complicated by his mostly absent alcoholic mother, and raising by a violent Swiss-German governess. A dramatic downgrade in lifestyle right around adolescence further inspires a great attraction for alcohol, drugs, and a series of increasingly shocking adventures.

Filled with a luminous cast of characters, and told with searing honesty and ironic wit, Beamish Boy is a redemptive story of survival and letting go, as we eagerly follow Albert from one zany adventure and near-death experience to the next. He is run over by his best friend after blacking out in a driveway, contracts malaria in east Africa, and joins a psychedelic “therapy” cult, until he miraculously “finds” himself, through photography, poetry, and a hilarious “awakening” at a meditation retreat center, realizing finally, what it means to be fully alive, to truly love.

Beamish Boy charts a compelling spiritual journey, from violence and self-annihilation to creativity and self-realization. Not your typical addiction memoir, Beamish Boy reads more like a witty and poetic novel, offering a profound window into the human condition, complete with its tragedies and ecstasies—illuminating one man’s quest for an abiding perspective and lasting wisdom.