"How would you like to live in a big castle with your brother and two sisters?"
That was the question juvenile court representative Lester Horton asked the four Prether kids one summer afternoon in 1944. Soon Carol (10), Barbara (4), Richard (6), and Jim (8) found themselves on their way to living in "the castle," otherwise known as the Greene County Children's Home, for the next 9 1/2 years in their young lives.
Harkening back to a seemingly simpler time in small-town America (1943-1953), the author, Richard L. Prether, recounts his memories of how he, his siblings, and the other 'orphans' lived each day – with the kids always trying to stay one step ahead of the harsh and often unknowable rules that the authorities used to maintain order. Sometimes funny but nearly always poignant, Prether's stories tell what it was like
to live in a county children's home with 40 other boys and girls where punishments were always right around the corner and rewards rarely so. Then, when the four Prether kids were finally released from the home nearly a decade later, how did they fare?
Prether's stories are heartfelt and have become the stuff of family legend. In fact, he repeated the stories so often while his four daughters were growing up that finally, one of them begged him to write a book. So, he did, and here it is.
He hopes you enjoy reading it as much as he did writing it.
