From the early 1900's and into the 1960's, many children who were mentally retarded were put in State homes where many of them spent the rest of their lives. Some of this was related to eugenics... removing the mentally incompetent from the gene pool, making it impossible for them to have children. In many of these homes, the treatment of the retarded and the insane was inhumane and abusive and they were often used in scientific experiments as well.

The Fernand Home for the Feebleminded near Boston, MA was one such institution. In addition to those who were classified as "idiots" and as "imbeciles" were those classified as "morons". The morons were on the low end of average intelligence and today would function well with training in normal society. And even among the "morons", there ended up children who were orphans with nowhere to go or children who had learning disabilities, but were of at least average intelligence. Many of these orphans had detachment disorders and had moved from foster home to foster home so many times that they had never had proper schooling. So they were behind in school, but they were not "morons".

This book is the story of some of these children, some of the boys of normal intelligence at Fernald Home, and in particular the stories of Joey Almeida and Fred Boyce. The way they were routinely abused, how their treatment built in to anger, their repeated attempts to run away, their eventually rebellion, and eventually their return to normal society is detailed in this book. It is touching and disturbing at the same time.

The amount of material the author researched and the number of personal interviews he collected is impressive. My only complaint with the book is that the author sometimes repeats himself. But the book is definitely one of those "stranger than fiction" stories and I could not put the book down.