kayla solomon

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.

There's a new set of 3Rs for our kids - respect, responsibility, and resilience - to better prepare them for life in the real world. Once developed, these skills let kids take charge, and let parents step back, to the benefit of all. Casting hover mothers and helicopter parents aside, Vicki Hoefle encourages a different, counterintuitive, yet much more effective, approach to parenting: for parents to sit on their hands, stay on the sidelines - even if duct tape is required!

Witty and straight-shooting, Duct Tape Parenting entertains as it informs parents how to do less in order to raise more confident, capable children.