The Exile

A Devoted Son's Spiritual Journey (The Exile Trilogy, Book 1)

De: L. Arik Greenberg

Narrado por: L. Arik Greenberg

As a college professor, Dr. Arik Greenberg had studied religion all his life, earning advanced academic degrees in his field. But none of this would sufficiently prepare him for his true spiritual journey. In The Exile, the first book of a trilogy, his challenge would be to rescue the family home from his mother’s deadly compulsive hoarding, and to protect his parents from their mental illnesses, borne out of a family legacy of abuse. His journey would lead him from a simple, trusting, ingenuous faith—through stages of doubt, anger, and Job-like questioning—and ultimately to a more complex and nuanced relationship with the Divine.

[Disclaimer: Contains graphic testimony of abuse, as well as some depictions of hoarding. Not for the faint of heart.]

©2023 L. Arik Greenberg (P)2024 L. Arik Greenberg

A psychological tour de force

My disclaimer: the author's mother and my father were close cousins and life-long friends.

This work of non-fiction blew me away. I have known many of the individuals who are written about in this auto-biography, but now I realize how much I did not really know or understand about them. It is an extraordinary account of what no family, indeed no child should ever experience: the ritualized sexual abuse by family and strangers at the hands of those who should be the most trustworthy, your own family. Warning: It is graphic, but Arik Greenberg does justice to this re-telling of his parents' stories, with dignity and attention to detail. While it is lengthy, I feel that this does nothing to diminish the depth and the effect of this true story, if anything, it intensifies them.