Troubled

In this raw coming-of-age memoir, Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities xe2x80x93 and what he learnt from seeing life from both sides of the tracks. Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. He was wrong: tragedy, poverty and violence marked his adolescent years. An unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts how Henderson eventually managed to find an escape route through the military, which led to an academic career at Yale and Cambridge. As he reflects on the fate of many of his friends xe2x80x93 drugs, death, prison xe2x80x93 Henderson never escapes the feeling of being on the outside looking in, or a sense that his academic achievements are hollow compared to the love and protection that comes from stable family life. He dissects the hypocrisies of contemporary social class and shows how the most privileged among us benefit from a set of xe2x80x98luxury beliefsxe2x80x99 that actively harm the most vulnerable.

Rob Henderson grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and the rural town of Red Bluff, California. He joined the Air Force at the age of seventeen. After his enlistment, he graduated from Yale University with a BS in psychology and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Once described as 'self-made' by the New York Times, Rob received a PhD in psychology from St. Catharinexe2x80x99s College, Cambridge in 2022. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and the New York Post, among other outlets. Robxe2x80x99s popular Substack newsletter is sent each week to more than forty thousand subscribers.