Silent Boy - Torey Hayden

Going to Cameron Highlands as I mentioned, I bring along a book to read just in case I needed to kill time. True enough that the whole trip there in Cameron, it was quite a traffic congestion and thus I manage to finish the book with tranquility.

It was a heartbreaking story that tells the of a boy trapped in silence and the teacher who rescued him, literally. So when special education teacher Torey Hayden first met fifteen-year-old Kevin, he was barricaded under a table. Desperately afraid of the world around him, he hadn’t spoken a word in eight years. Imagine that even the kid who weep did not even produce a sound. Maybe it was a form of defense to protect himself and others.

The Zoo-boy was considered hopeless, incurable but Hayden refused to believe it, though she realized it might well take a miracle to break through the walls he had built around himself. With unwavering devotion and gentle, patient love, she set out to free him; slowly uncovered a shocking violent history and a terrible secret that an unfeeling bureaucracy had simply filed away and forgotten. This shows that the world is built upon a perception of the mass. Just like what happened to another character inside the book, Jeff who got transfered just because he is gay.

Torey refused to give up on this tragic “lost case.” For a trapped and frightened boy desperately needed her help and she knew in her heart she could not rest easy until she had rescued him from the darkness. It took the greatest thing of all — love to save a person.

Yes. Love was a greatest thing of all. Although I have never read the Murphy’s Boy but being a republication or so, still it is heart wrenching story to say the least.