A Place of Truth immerses readers into a stream of vivid recollections –stories within stories - of experiences from earliest personal memory to later adulthood, while offering relevant historical context, such as music, social norms, and times of war. How does a child make sense of their world, when it is rife with challenges involving betrayal, losses, rejection, chaos, and the turmoil of abandonment? Julian’s vibrant characterizations of childhood encounters and significant relationships, facilitate readers toward understanding people as multi-faceted, not one dimensional, as in all good or all bad, including himself. Effort to incisively portray social situations often reveal irony and humor without pretense. Love and affection seem fleeting and insufficient, but there are plenty of enticements leaning toward the illicit. It’s through relationships that humans develop self-concept and perceptions about people, the world, and who to trust. Child development specialists identify relationships as crucial to stability, and yet the adults in Julian’s young life, are mostly unaware of their effect on the developing boy who is ricocheted from place to place on the streets of Detroit, not knowing what’s to come, who he can trust, when he might eat, or where he might sleep. Implicit in Julian's genuine account, is a lens into developmental trauma, portraying how a child adapts to a toxic world of adults; many of whom are caught in their individual life webs of destructive behavior and relationships. It’s up to readers to identify what elements and influences steered Julian to endure and find himself learning and leaning toward what became his place of truth.