FREE: Gentle House"" by Anna Perrott Rose (1954)

The listing, Gentle House"" by Anna Perrott Rose (1954) has ended.

copyright 1954 by Houghton Miffin Company hardbound,177 pages

n January, 1950, a widowed New Jersey schoolteacher, Anna Rose Wright (1890-1968, pen name: Anna Perrott Rose) took a disturbed Latvian war orphan into her home. Andritins had been orphaned during the war, and he had spent some years in camps in Russia and Germany as a D.P. (Displaced Person).

Speaking only a few words of English, traumatized by his experiences during the war, young "Andris" (also called "Andy" or "Tinchy") presented an array of distressing behaviors. His IQ was initially scored at 65. He flew into rages that could last several hours, bit members of the family, fought with other children at school, and pounded his head on the walls until it bled. The family with which he had initially been placed returned him to New Jersey social services because of the behavior problems.

How patience, kindness, discipline, brothers and sisters in the home, school, church, choir, Scouts, and above all committed love by the author healed the wartime scars makes compelling reading more than 50 years after the book was published in 1954.