Summary of "An Elephant Healed Me"

It all begins when as a ten year old boy.Michael is on his way to an orphanage.Accompanied by caseworker on the trip he has a fear of what will become of him.Once there although skeptical he soon finds out that things are much better than he had imagined them to be.His experiences at the orphanage are inter woven with memories associated with the past before he was sent to the orphanage.Eventually Michael decides to run away and ends up hopping on a freight train where he meets a one legged man with a bulldog named Pete.Little does he know that the chance meeting will change his life forever.With no real plan in place he follows the stranger to a circus where he finds work and a place to start his own life.Throughout the experiences in the Circus there are many more references to his earlier life.He eventually ends up wandering through the hobo camps and finding work with the gypsy 'travelers'. This chapter of his life is wrought with hard experiences that he has had to learn but the lessons serve him well and he finds work in the Carnivals and in places like the French Quarter in New Orleans.It is a variance of many things that seem to weave in and out of Michael's life that carries him from one end of the country to the other with a rich mixture of experiences and interesting people who contribute to his growth. (Click on Summary title to go to albums)