Twilight Children: Three Voices No One Heard Until a Therapist Listened [Hardcover]

Torey Hayden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

A light in the darkness for severely troubled children, former special education teacher Torey Hayden faced three of her most extraordinary challenges after she left the classroom

Nine-year-old Cassandra, kidnapped by her father and found starving, dirty, and picking through garbage cans -- a child prone to long silences and erratic, violent behavior, whose hard-won recollections of the nightmare she endured could not be fully trusted.

Charming, charismatic four-year-old Drake, who would speak only in private to his mother -- his tough, unbending grandfather's demands for an immediate cure threatened to cause the delightful boy and his family irreparable harm.

And though she had never worked with adults, Hayden agreed to help fearful and silent eighty-two-year-old massive stroke victim Gerda -- discovering in the process that a treatment's successes could prove nearly as heartbreaking as its limitations.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hayden was working as a special ed teacher and needed a break. With her psychiatric training and specialization in "elective mutism," she was cajoled into working for a hospital-based psychiatric crisis and assessment unit. She begins this book with the story of a girl who was only six when she was abducted by her father; returned to her home two years later, she alternated long stretches of silence with lying and sexual accusations. Hayden was then asked to assess a delightful preschool boy whose voice no one had ever heard except his mother; his belligerent grandfather ordered Hayden to "fix" the boy's problem. Then she was called to observe an elderly woman who'd had a stroke that may have rendered her unable to speak. Gradually, the woman began to recount girlhood memories to Hayden--who thus knew she was still lucid--but would that satisfy the doctors who wanted to send her to a nursing home? Each case unfolds like a detective story, with Hayden piecing together the mystery of the silences from the various clues she gleans. Besides being a delightful raconteur, Hayden is also a very gentle, very sensible therapist. Yes, her patient is dissociating, but that's normal, we all do it--the real question is, "at what point on the continuum does it move from being resourceful and helpful to maladaptive and damaging?" This is a compulsively readable book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Hayden writes with compelling grace and compassion as she describes working in a "psychiatric crisis and assessment unit for children" in a metropolitan hospital. Her background in special education and counseling, with a focus on treating elective mutism, equipped her to tackle the three challenging cases that are presented in this volume. Employing a narrative chronology similar to the pattern she used in Beautiful Child (Morrow, 2002), the author documents the particulars of her approach to treating a volatile, manipulative nine-year-old abuse victim; a mute but sociable and atypically charismatic four-year-old; and, in a change of pace, an 82-year-old stroke victim. The dysfunctional family dynamics impacting each patient are explored, as are impediments to the therapist's interfacing with relatives. The author's intuitive and professional analysis of each case, coupled with feedback from medical colleagues based on reviewing videotapes of her counseling sessions, permits readers a glimpse of the delicately gauged steps involved in coaching a patient toward wellness. This work offers neither simple solutions nor guaranteed happy endings, but rather puts forward a realistic portrayal of breakthroughs and quandaries in the emotional landscape in which crisis intervention professionals operate. Eminently readable, it offers a valuable perspective for students considering career options in this field.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060560886
• ISBN-13: 978-0060560881
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Torey Hayden is an educational psychologist and special education teacher who, since 1979, has chronicled her struggles in the classroom in a succession of best-selling books. She lives in North Wales with her daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Hayden's best work, but still enjoyable, June 13, 2005

By 

Kelley Hunt (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Twilight Children: Three Voices No One Heard Until a Therapist Listened (Hardcover)

I have read several of Hayden's books and enjoyed them all, so I was glad to see a new one come out. However, this book falls a bit short when compared with the others. This book is the story of 3 patients that Hayden treated around the same time; Cassandra- a girl who had been kidnapped by her father, Drake- a boy who, according to his mother, spoke at home but nowhere else, and Gerda- an elderly woman who had suffered a stroke.
Given the title of the book, you can't help but wonder how Gerda fits into the story and you are expecting that some trauma from her childhood will be revealed. Although it is revealed that Gerda suffered an impoverished and "marginalized" childhood, this does not seem to have anything to do with her speech problems which were apparently just the result of the stroke. However, Gerda's situation, her sad tales from childhood, her estrangement from her children, and the fact that someone had all her well-cared for cats put to sleep while she was in the hospital add a lot of depth and poignancy to the book. The part about the cats made me cry.
As for the other two patients, Cassandra and Drake, their stories were also interesting, but the book suffers from excessive repetition - especially re: Cassandra's story. I think the editor should have stayed with this one a little longer. Hayden draws vivid portraits of both patients and their relatives as she tells her tale, which is one of her strong points. If you haven't read Hayden's works, I would not suggest starting with this one, but if you are familiar with her books, you will definitely want to read "Twilight Children".

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Reawakening!, April 3, 2005

By 

Amy Snyder (North Carolina, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Twilight Children: Three Voices No One Heard Until a Therapist Listened (Hardcover)

Torey's newest book is an excellent read! I couldn't put the book down! I loved the way she rotated the story among the three characters and I enjoyed reading about her time as a therapist, as opposed to a classroom teacher.

Reading this book reawakened in me a fervent need to reread all of her books and I'm currently on a reading marathon. As an eighth-year special education teacher, I highly recommend all of her works to anyone interested in children with special needs. We certainly need more people to follow the compassionate example she has set and documented in each of her books.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Un"put-down"able!, May 29, 2005

By 

ScarletM (Philadelphia, PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twilight Children: Three Voices No One Heard Until a Therapist Listened (Hardcover)

I was thrilled to see a new Hayden book and grabbed it off the library shelf. I read the book in one sitting as I could not tear myself away from the compelling stories. Hayden writes so well, by the end of the book you feel very involved in the lives of the characters. I found this book fascinating, sad but mostly compelling reading. Highly recommended.