I was required to read this book for my Social Welfare Programs/Policies course in college. As I started reading it I was unsure if I would be able to finish it. After getting through the part of how the group home got started it became so fascinating I could hardly put it down. It's heartbreaking to read what some of these residents go through on a day to day basis. I think the director, Linda Slezak, is an amazing woman! All of the staff works so hard and for such little pay. This book was wonderful and I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about group homes and mental illness!

The residents of "9 Highland Road", the group home for people with mental illnesses featured in this book, are truly life's real heros, like most people with these terrible afflictions - afflictions that are still so badly misunderstood.
As a schizophrenia sufferer myself, I was repeatedly moved to tears by the plight of these amazing people, and could identify with them, totally.
One young woman, a girl with multipile personalities, suffered horrendously, yet was still able to bounce back and do well, even though she still suffers terribly at night.
Her courage is a great inspiration, along with all the other residents featured in the true stories in this book.
The author, Michael Winerip, is also an inspiration, and I pray that everyone will read this, his first book of many, I hope.
He has done the mentally ill proud and is a wonderful, compassionate, understanding writer.
Thank you, Michael.

This book tells us what really goes on inside group homes. It also tells us about the parochial neighbors who fight the placement of group homes in their neighborhoods because if irrational fears and ignorance.

The author lived in the group home at 9 Highland Road on Long Island, a wealthy community that did not want the house located there and disgraced themselves in the eyes of many readers by raising hell at public meetings.

The people living at this home did not destroy the community or devalue neighborhood homes. They also tested the patients of the staff. Winerip does a good job explaining the psychiatric problems experienced by each resident and how staff dealt with the daily travails of that environment. The staff are heroes for doing this work for low pay.

The scariest part of the story is Julie, a resident suffering great trauma from childhood horrors and has many personalities to cope with that trauma. One personality takes over the body and when another personality pops out it may not even know where Julie is or how she got there. Apparently, one personality had a social life in New York City doing God knows what. When another personality pops out "she" realizes that the prior personality knows these companions well. But the second personality finds herself trying to converse with people who think they know her, but she doesn't know them. Most of the second half of the book deals with things like this. Scary stuff.

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