RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN is an emotionally intense story of a boy who proves against all odds that he may be shaped by his abusive past, but he's not condemned to repeat it. Growing up in the mill slums surrounding Pittsburgh, all that 16-year-old Daniel Robinson ever wanted was a family who loved him. Instead, he was ignored by a mother who hid in her room praying to an unseen God, and a drunk for a father who used everyone as a punching bag. After yet another beating, he runs to the only man he trusts-his pastor. He welcomes Daniel-then sexually assaults him! Devastated, and frightened out of his mind, he runs away again, spending the next ten years wandering the country throughout the turbulent 1960's, desperate to forget the bedlam he called home. He tries to make a new family with all the misfits he meets on the road, all while getting caught up in the hippie drug invasion in San Francisco, racial violence in Cleveland and Detroit, and especially a deadly anti-war protest at Kent State. Disillusioned, and nearly killed several times on his odyssey, Daniel loses hope he will ever be happy-until he meets Kate Fitzgerald, who was running from her own demons. Together they get a second chance at love and the family they both want.But can he ever run far enough to forget his haunted past? Complete at 166,000-plus words, it is an epic journey of love and forgiveness. Daniel's story, with its harrowing social themes conveyed through an intense personal odyssey, bridges the gap between literary and commercial fiction in a way that is both heartbreaking, yet hopeful.