In All Things: A Return to the Drooling Ward

. . . powerful; beautifully written well-observed and effective. --Kirkus ReviewIn 1970 a seventeen-year-old trainee enters the psychiatric technician training program at Sonoma State Hospital. Having volunteered there as a high school student he feels fairly well prepared and presumes that conditions like those in Jack Londons 1914 short story about the place Told in the Drooling Ward are a thing of the past. He soon discovers that what really happens behind the closed doors of the institution has not changed much since Londons time certainly not for the better.Taught the necessary skill of how to choke out a patient on his first day and told with a shrug that sometimes when patients run away to the nearby hills theyre never found the young trainee is thrust into a world of austere realities that most adults would balk at entering.Based on author Ed Daviss real-life experiences In All Things is an honest reflection of a pivotal time in his life as well as a compelling social commentary on how mental institutions were run in the 1970s. Told as a fictionalized first-person narrative and expressed with stirring compassion his story is an open door into a dark part of our history that will stay with you long after you read the last page.