Memoir
The Hidden Heartache
Available now. Additional retailers will be added as they go live.
About the book
Sacramento, California, 1965. A gentle father ties his three-year-old son to a rollaway bed while on vacation, not out of cruelty, but because it is the only way to keep him safe through the night.
Craig L. DeLue was a boy no one could contain. By age five he had smashed water meters with a hammer, led a toddler a mile and a half to a candy machine, and been banned from nearly every home in his parents’ social circle. The verdict of the era was unanimous: bad child, worse parents.
His mother refused to accept it. For seven years, Judith DeLue, a trained nurse with a clinical mind, observed, documented, and searched, while friends retreated and experts blamed her. In 1968, she finally found a doctor with an answer, and a single tablet changed everything.
The Hidden Heartache is a memoir of severe ADHD before the world had a name for it, and an honest, hopeful field report for every parent still searching for their own answer.
A true story of a boy no one could keep still, and the mother who never stopped fighting for him.