Amy Joyner
Author
Jackson Glacier - nps.gov
Darkest Sunshine
At age sixteen, in 1978, baby-faced Matty is orphaned in his Nebraska home. With no one to care for him, he begins two years living in three small-town Wyoming foster homes. Confused, he wavers between calling himself Matty, Matthew or Matt.
Life's only constant is sexual abuse. But he is never tough enough to tell an abuser, “No.”
Whether delivered by the hands of his distant cousin in his first foster home, or later, a twentysomething co-worker, or even foster father who is also a homeschooling preacher, the teen doesn’t act as his own protector.
Still not eighteen, Matthew runs away.
But is the abuse over while living in an Idaho homeless camp?
Not written as an assault on the foster system, Darkest Sunshine shows the resilience of a teenage orphan – a foster kid, but not a trouble maker.
The boy’s two-year-long account is the debut novel written by Amy Joyner, a graduate of the University of Montana School of Journalism. She is plotting another title about Matt, the sorrowful main character from Darkest Sunshine.
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