This Way Out
by Ron Dechristoforo
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"A moving and entertaining account of youthful resilience." -Edward Zuckerman, Emmy-winning writer for Law & Order, author of Wealth Management: A Thriller
A gutsy coming-of-age novel that may rip your heart out. Set in Philadelphia during the tumultuous 1960s, This Way Out is the story of three inseparable friends on a forced march through a long, often entertaining, sometimes harrowing journey.
A reckoning is coming.
Surrounded by a ten-foot wall, the Dumonde College for Boys, a centuries-old institution, is home to sixteen hundred fatherless and orphaned White boys.
Beyond the north wall, a Black neighborhood crumbles and erupts, roiling to integrate the Dumonde campus. Protesters circle the gates, day and night. Beyond the south wall, defeat exhausts the lowest White people. In between lies a stronghold where the stoic Dumonde boys live behind the times, disregarding a world in turmoil shaking their walls.
No boy here gets the childhood he imagines. The Dumonde College for Boys is a hall of mirrors populated by devils disguised as caretakers and some precious few better angels. There are no metaphors for this experience. Nothing else resembles it. What these boys share may be enough to survive severe conditions, where fear is commonplace and friendships nurture courage. All are seeking a way out. For some, it may be too late.
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Book Details
- ISBN
- 9798888247853
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Authors
- Ron Dechristoforo
- Publisher
- Koehler Books
- Published Date
- July 30, 2025
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 356
- Physical Info
- 9 in L x 6 in W (1.42 lb)
Wow! No, wait: WOW!!!!!!! Mr. DeChristoforo, you grabbed me in the first paragraph of your book, and you tightened your grip with every page that was turned. I fell in love with your "Three Amigos", as well as with their friend and mentor. Not to be too cliche, but I laughed, I cried, I ground my molars and I marveled at the story you wove. Thank you for giving the world this piece of your heart!!!
This Way Out transports you back to a time of great wonder and societal challenges while you walk side by side with three friends that grow up together in the less than ideal circumstances. The journey will make you smile and laugh and then cringe and cry. Growing up to grow out has been so beautifully expressed in this dramatic novel. The author immerses you so deeply into the writing, that you can smell the coffee, hear the heartbeat of the boys’ environment and feel the characters’ angst, joy, courage, pride and love for their unique comradeship! You’ll want to read this novel in one sitting, but slowing your read is so much more powerful as each story within the story is worth savoring! I hope this novel becomes a movie. Can you say Oscar?
Excellent story, well written, and does that thing I love - gives me a glimpse into a world I knew nothing about. Highly recommended!
Excellent story telling, a truly creative weave of people and events that gives the reader a real sense of the character’s experiences and the culture of the time period.
Part historical fiction, part social commentary, part psychological study, part romance, part tragedy, part comedy, part--the largest part, perhaps--coming of age story (although that label is to cheapen it), the author of This Way Out, Ron DeChristoforo, has a lot of balls in the air. But it's remarkable that he keeps all of those balls juggling from the beginning of the novel to the end.The plot, such as it is, can be summed up in a few words: boys' parents die; boys are enrolled in an urban orphanage surrounded by what, at the time (the 1960s), would be called a ghetto; boys are treated with haphazard regard for their welfare by the administrators and caretakers and, at worse, they are abused; boys brutalize one another as a result of long-established hierarchies; boys manage to survive and triumph with the help of kind-hearted adults and their own fortitude, will and smarts.This is not a novel that you keep reading in order to find out what happens to the main character, because you know his fate on the opening page. This is more a novel that concerns circumstance and character and how individuals deal with the circumstances in which they find themselves. As with all great characters in fiction, we continue reading the narrations in which they appear in order to remain in the characters' company, to see what they'll say, how they think, how they'll respond to a given situation. In This Way Out, you'll find characters that will linger in your memory for a long while.
