Book description
Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was given a lobotomy. He was 56
years old when he found out why. The four decades in between tell a
story of profound love and compassion.
In 1960 Howard's father and stepmother delivered him into the hands
of the man who had invented the 'ice pick' lobotomy. Expelled from the
mainstream medical community, his once-popular procedure now a grisly
medical relic, Dr Walter Freeman was eager to turn this temperamental
12-year-old into a submissive boy - especially after hearing the
terrible lies his stepmother told about him. Howard, told he was going
into the hospital for tests, was instead given electro-shock
treatments and a transorbital lobotomy. It took him 40 years to
recover.
Howard Dully's escape from that dark place is a voyage of enormous
hope and universal appeal.
Howard Dully was born in 1948. At the age of 12, he became one of
the youngest victims of the ice pick lobotomy. It would take him 40
years to recover. Abandoned by his family within a year of surgery,
Howard was institutionalised in his teens, incarcerated in his
twenties, and homeless and alcoholic in his thirties. But in his
forties, in love with a woman who was determined to have a life with
him, Howard got sober, got married, got a college degree and emerged
into a kind of normalcy. He is now a tour bus driver, who lives
happily with his wife in California. This is his first book.
Helping Howard tell his story is journalist and writer Charles
Fleming, former Newsweek staff writer and Vanity Fair contributor.
