Howard Dully was born in 1948. At the age of 12, he became one of the youngest victims of the ice pick lobotomy. It would take him 40 years to recover. Abandoned by his family within a year of surgery, Howard was institutionalised in his teens, incarcerated in his twenties, and homeless and alcoholic in his thirties. But in his forties, in love with a woman who was determined to have a life with him, Howard got sober, got married, got a degree and emerged into a kind of normalcy. He is now a bus driver, who lives happily with his wife in California. This is his first book.

Helping Howard tell his story is journalist and writer Charles Fleming, former Newsweek staff writer and Vanity Fair contributor.