![\"Being](\"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Being-Henry-David.jpg\")
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Imagine being 17 years old and randomly waking up on the floor at Penn Station with no memory \u2014 not even your own name. \u00a0\u201cHank\u201d awoke with only the clothes on his back, $10 in his pocket, and a paperback book.\u00a0 I put Hank in quotes because it wasn\u2019t his real name; it was just a name he assumed because he needed to think of a name quickly and the book he carried was Walden<\/em> by Henry David Thoreau. \u00a0When the police came over to settle a scuffle between Hank and a mentally ill man who was trying to eat his book, he told them his name was Henry David\u2026 I mean, it would probably have been a little awkward to try and explain to the police that he didn\u2019t know who he was \u2014 and Hank wasn\u2019t sure whether it would be good or bad to be figured out and sent back home.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been intrigued by the concept of amnesia, and I needed to know who Hank really was and why he lost his memory, so I was hooked from the start.\u00a0 Although it was frustrating to experience things from Hank\u2019s side, not knowing what had happened, it helped me to get into Hank\u2019s head and to better appreciate his heartbreak as his memories began to return. \u00a0I thought this was a brilliant story about personal discovery and self-forgiveness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imagine being 17 years old and randomly waking up on the floor at Penn Station with no memory \u2014 not even your own name. \u00a0\u201cHank\u201d awoke with only the clothes on his back, $10 in his pocket, and a paperback book.\u00a0 I put Hank in quotes because it wasn\u2019t his real name; it was just … Continue reading Being Henry David by Cal Armistead<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-books-for-young-adults","category-fiction","category-reviewed-by-chrissie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}