"One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed ... the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die ... Believing, as most parents do, that they were trying to do the best, David's parents, in fact, did just the reverse: Edward Small, a Detroit physician ... was convinced that he could cure his little son by shooting him up with heavy doses of radiation, yet with near deadly results ... Depicting this coming-of-age story ... Small tells us of his journey from sickly child, to cancer patient, to troubled teen, whose risky decision to run away from home at 16 - with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist - would become the ultimate survival statement."--Publisher description.