THE OUTSIDER (Book)

PT BOOKSHELF

ON SEXUALITY, SPIRITUALITY, SCHIZOPHRENIA AND MORE A JOURNEY INTO MY FATHER'S STRUGGLE WITH MADNESS

Broadway, $14

One day in 1995, award-winning mental-health writer Nathaniel Lachenmeyer received word of his father's death. A heart attack had ended his life at age 51, but something far worse had taken his life away many years before: schizophrenia. Charles Lachenmeyer was once a young sociologist with a Ph.D., a wife and son and a promising future, but paranoid delusions forced him into a life on the street. Nathaniel retraces his father's steps in hopes of understanding what happened and why. The resulting book takes us on a spiraling descent into poverty, estrangement and isolation.