The Endless Search: A Memoir

by David Ray

David Ray’s soul search, recounted in this powerful illustrated memoir, is a Dickensian tale — encompassing a childhood in an orphanage, an endless series of abusive “uncles,” and an adolescence haunted by a sadistic guardian, followed by a tumultuous adulthood marked equally by tragedy and triumph. With rare candor and unsentimentality, Ray — winner of the William Carlos Williams Award, the Marianne Moore Award, and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award — writes about finding hope within a society that first generates abusers then empowers them, ignoring victims’ pleas for help and enforcing their silence.

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reaction, acceptance, thoughtless direction of this life is baffling. I can't understand the willingness to participate in the abuse. Stand up for yourself or this happens, by consent. Depressing indeed.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read about David Ray in a recent Tucson newspaer I thought his memoirs would bear up to closer scrutiny... as well they did.
Having lived in both Oklahoma and Arizona, as he had, and experienced a problem with the 'father figure' in my life too his story, all though a generation apart from mine, resonanted with similar demons and passions.
I also felt as a reserach subject for a future novel the bearing of his soul and sexual proclivities would fit in with a character I had in mind and I was not disappointed in that regard either.
As for the book, well Ray just has a wonderful way of laying out a story. Told in child to adult format he lets us in to all his secrets and lies and I imagine the writing of it was therapeutic to the author.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came for the Oklahoma part of this story, but I stayed for all of the crazy shit that ends up happening. Dude ranch, writer's cult, hit men, and so much more.