Secret life

A memoir whose sensational subject - childhood molestation and sexual addiction - becomes, through the extraordinary candor and dispassion of its telling, a deeply moral and spiritual autobiography. Michael Ryan came of age in the fifties and sixties - a seemingly idyllic period for him of Little League baseball, Boy Scout overnight hikes, a first job delivering newspapers, summers spent at the community swimming pool, cruising Main Street, and high school graduation trips to the Jersey shore. But the reality that lay beneath this chrome surface was a secret life that was initiated when, as a five-year-old, Ryan was molested by a neighbor. It continued as he contended with his father's alcoholism, and as he himself started down the road of sexual obsession.