Story-Portal

Here is a story that is so rare, so wonderful, that it is difficult to do it justice. Kin Platt has written a uniquely tender, understanding, warm and human story of a boy’s search for love and understanding.


Roger couldn't pronounce his own name, because he had trouble with the letter “r”. The speech defect was deeper than that, however—it was emotional and stemmed from many sources.

When the book opens, Roger—the son of a self-centered painter and a preoccupied Hollywood producer who are divorced—and his mother are living in New York for the first time, following the divorce. Roger knows that neither of his parents loves him or wants him.

In the strange, new city, Roger wanders and makes friends, sees much that is harsh, but also finds compassion in certain quarters. It is a lonely life for this walker-in-the-city and in his loneliness he encounters many remarkable people, who respond to him uniquely. There is Pat Bentley, the tall, willowy. sophisticated model—there has never been anyone quite like her!— who lives in the penthouse above and treats him as an equal. And there is Roger Tunnell, the handsome and rugged Frenchman who looks like a movie actor, who loves Pat as well as Roger does and is able to give Roger a certain courage. Nemo Newman, a strange, quixotic, young girl who is crippled, but who asks no quarter, and Roberta Clemm, a nurse with a heart of gold beneath a businesslike exterior, are able to reach Roger when few others can.

Kin Platt, with infinite wisdom, has written a classic. The story of Roger—a strange, marvelous, mixed-up little boy—will haunt all who read it. The reader closes the book with not only a new understanding of himself, but a heightened awareness of the troubled world many youngsters live in.