★ 01/31/2022
Mills (Next of Kin) lays bare in this unflinching account the irrevocable impact of the sexual abuse he suffered as a teen. In 1968, while attending Connecticut’s Camp Ella Fohs, 13-year-old Mills was pulled aside by the camp’s director, Dan Farinella, for a private talk about masturbation. In the fall of that year, Farinella invited Mills to the camp off-season to “help out with some projects.” The sexual abuse started there and continued for years, with Mills silenced by his shame. As an adult, Mills struggled for years to find stability and a sense of purpose, committing petty thefts, taking drugs, studying at a yeshiva, and dropping out of grad school before therapy helped him understand that he had PTSD. Even with that diagnosis, Mills writes, the road forward was full of hurdles, and his efforts to bring Farinella to justice—after obtaining accounts from “a far-flung network of men” that had been abused by the camp director—fell short due to red tape and the low prioritization given to such accusations by police. While it’s a harrowing story, Mills’s ability to persevere and eventually build his own family offers hope, and his raw vulnerability inspires. This is a searing testament to human resilience. (Apr.)
"A searing, haunting, urgent cri du coeur.”
—The New York Times Books Review
"An . . . unforgettable memoir of sexual abuse and its lifelong consequences . . . visceral, gripping . . . A vitally important book for fellow survivors—and anyone seeking justice for victims."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Mills lays bare in this unflinching account the irrevocable impact of the sexual abuse he suffered as a teen . . . Mills’s ability to persevere . . . offers hope, and his raw vulnerability inspires. This is a searing testament to human resilience."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"In a lean, sharp telling that is as propulsive as it is painful, Chosen relates a devastating story of childhood sexual assault and one man’s Herculean reclamation of his adult life. Mills also illuminates the silent brotherhood of boys whose shame and pain remain unreached by our institutions and our conversations, even by the benevolent efforts of the #MeToo movement. There's a very good chance that this constantly surprising, urgent book will save lives."
—Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing
"A searing and singular account of how a young boy’s experience of abuse reverberates through his life until he finally confronts not only his abuser but also the powerful institutions that enabled him. Chosen is a masterfully written story of love and hate that is as tender as it is traumatic. I couldn’t put it down."
—Geraldine Brooks, author of People of the Book
"In this game-changing memoir, Stephen Mills draws the reader into a boy's and then a man's journey through the wilderness of trauma. Beautifully written and deeply moving, Chosen elevates the survivor story to an Odyssean trek to reclaim one's soul."
—Marci Hamilton, CEO and founder, Child USA
"Truly a remarkable book, not only for the life story that Mills shares, but for the power of its message. Too often the Jewish community promotes a belief in the "otherness" of domestic and sexual abuse—that it happens somewhere else. This beautiful, heartbreaking memoir is a reminder that no group is spared.”
—Loribeth Weinstein, CEO Emerita, Jewish Women International
"A breathtaking memoir. Mills is not simply a survivor of sexual abuse telling his story. He is a writer whose literary power shows on every page of this extraordinary book.”
—Dr. Richard Gartner, author of Betrayed as Boys
"Chosen is not so much an abuse-memoir as a tale, masterfully told, of what it means to live in a human body with a human heart. Yes, there is brokenness here, but there is also extreme beauty, wisdom, and bravery on Mills’s crooked path toward healing and justice."
—Florence Williams, author of Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey
"Chosen left me shaking. Mills's searing portrayal of the layers of grief, anger, guilt, bewilderment, and helplessness capture so vividly the lasting trauma of child abuse. It is a compelling contribution to helping children and adults heal, and to pushing all of us to do better to protect our kids."
—Nina Sankovitch, author of American Rebels
"Chosen is at once a compulsively readable account of the insidious effects of being molested and a revelatory portrait of the classic male predator, who disguises his sexual addiction as fatherly love. Mills has done the nearly impossible by bringing him to vibrant life. He also shows how predators seduce the parents of their victims into handing over their children; he indicts our society for turning a blind eye to an epidemic of abuse; and he recounts his own painful, brave journey to heal himself."
—Rafael Yglesias, author of The Wisdom of Perversity
03/01/2022
Mills (Next of Kin) chronicles his experience of sexual abuse by a serial predator, starting in 1968, when the author was 13. He writes that after his father's death when Mills was four, his relationship with his mother was strained, which he believes made him vulnerable to the predations of Dan Farinella, the director of Camp Ella Fohs, the Jewish summer camp Mills attended in Connecticut. Farinella groomed Mills and ingratiated himself to the Mills family with gifts and boxes of cannoli. Mills's book effectively portrays the feelings of utter confusion, fear, and shame that accompanied each assault by Farinella. He had viewed Farinella as a mentor, someone who cared about his future and lavished time on him; like so many other adolescent victims, he did not initially recognize his encounters with Farinella as abuse. The reckoning came later, and at great cost to his physical and mental health. After experiencing drug addiction, run-ins with the law, panic attacks, and harrowing nightmares, Mills sought help. He was slow to connect his anguish with the abuse and his persistent denial is emblematic of the self-blame many victims carry into adulthood. He eventually attains clarity, but the institutions that enabled Farinella have never been held accountable. VERDICT Important testimony; recommended for all libraries.—Barrie Olmstead
★ 2022-02-09
A horrifyingly unforgettable memoir of sexual abuse and its lifelong consequences.
Mills first experienced trauma after the early death of his father, who suffered from both nerve disease and mental illness. In late boyhood, still grieving, he fell into a trap carefully laid by a summer-camp manager. The author’s descriptions of his abuse are uncomfortably graphic, and readers will join him in his reaction to the first of them: “I closed my eyes and prayed. I’m not here. I’m not here.” The perpetrator insinuated himself into Mills’ family life, convincing his mother and stepfather to allow Mills to go on vacation with him to the Bahamas, where yet more molestation occurred. Finding relief along various avenues as he grew into adulthood—from attending yeshiva to taking a pharmacopeia of illegal drugs and committing small-scale crimes—Mills drifted: “My Jewish soul—Shlomo’s soul—had found its way home,” he writes. “But Stephen kept checking the doors for escape routes.” Eventually, with the support of Margaret Mead, Mills undertook graduate studies even as his molester rose in the world of intergroup summer camps. Mills became a counselor, and witnessing the same molester lure young men into lairs at one such camp spurred him to bring the criminal to justice. That effort, which occupies the latter third of this visceral, gripping book, is both an endless game of cat and mouse and the subject of a narrative full of disappointments. The FBI, promising at first, failed to deliver, since Mann Act provisions had expired, even though Mills provided testimonials from numerous of his contemporaries that they, too, had been abused. The late lawyer and thriller author Andrew Vachss also tried to help, to no avail. It was only through civil actions after the perpetrator died, targeting employers that knew of and tolerated the abuse, that some possible form of retribution emerged, a matter unresolved at the end of this powerful, closely observed account.
A vitally important book for fellow survivors—and anyone seeking justice for victims.
