A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home by Steve Pemberton
A Review By: SY
Home is the place where our life stories begin. A Chance in the World is the astonishing true story of a boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Down in the dank basement, amid my moldy, hoarded food and beloved worm-eaten books, I dreamed that my real home, the place where my story had begun, was out there somewhere, and one day I was going to find it.
Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, Steve finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and begins to hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will find his true home. A fair-complexioned boy with blue eyes, a curly Afro, and a Polish last name, he is determined to unravel the mystery of his origins and find his birth family. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to find that nothing is as it appears.
Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.
Review Notes:
Audio Book Publication Year: 2019
An installment in a Series? No
Narrator (s): Steve Pemberton
Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, Steve finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and begins to hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will find his true home.
Born with the name Steve Klakowicz, Pemberton opens the book with a heartbreaking childhood memory and it captures the listener from the beginning, because it leaves a question that we spend the rest of the book trying to answer and understand.
After being removed from his biological mother, Pemberton was placed in the foster care system at a very young age and learned early on to have a spirit of survival. He provides vivid and terrifying accounts of abuse and neglect that he suffered at the hands of his foster family, and merely listening can make your heart race. During these times, Pemberton developed coping mechanisms and relationships that provided small encouragements as he endured unimaginable trauma. One such escape was excelling at academics, and ultimately, his character as a student would provide him an opportunity to escape what had become a living nightmare. He spent a good portion of his young adult life struggling to overcome what he had been subjected to as a child and in pursuit of the one thing no one could seem to answer for him: his identity.
The story was well-written and gives insight into the failings of the foster care system to protect the most vulnerable. As a listener, I found myself holding my breath during much of his story, silently rooting for young Steve to make it out with his humanity intact. A Chance In The World was adapted into a feature film in 2018.
Pemberton is not a professional narrator and his delivery of the book registers as flat and monotone at times, but given that he is telling a life story that any of us could only hope to survive, it is fascinating nonetheless and worth the listen.
Reading Recommendation? Yes!
Rating: 5 (I need another one!)
Content Warnings? Physical abuse/violence
