Title: Autobiography of a Life Worth Living With God’s Help: The Adopted Son
Author: Joseph C. Peterson
Publisher: PageTurner Press and Media
ISBN: 1638717303
Pages: 86
Genre: Non-Fiction
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
How many would have survived a childhood of unrelenting horror, only to emerge stronger and guided by a higher purpose, raising a loving family, becoming a chemist, industrialist, successful restaurateur and philosopher?
Meet Joseph C. Peterson, the author of this spare but wondrous volume that is brimming with heart, life, and feeling. Peterson found himself one of eight unlucky siblings, abandoned by their dad and put out for adoption by their struggling and woefully impoverished mom. Young Joseph finds himself at the mercy of his foster parents, a well-meaning but weak-willed man and a sadistically cruel woman who puts the lad through his paces, having him walk on rocks wearing a backpack loaded with stones…burning his genitals when she suspects him of playing with himself (this is a memoir; it’s all true.)
Peterson inherits his adoptive dad’s chemical company: all work and no perks. After Peterson Senior’s demise, Joseph continues to support Mrs. ‘in the style to which she is accustomed’–the best digs, most expensive furniture, society functions, and the like. Her lavish tastes stress his generosity and finite budget. This rampant profligacy continues for decades as a heroic and saintly effort to have Joseph carry the weight without complaint.
When God gives him lemons, he makes lemonade! He finds time to study and pursue his beloved chemistry during free hours, ramping up the family business to meet the pressing demands of industrial Indiana. In the process, he creates and patents a number of acid-retrieval systems which significantly curb pollution and are likely still with us today. He studies business, pursues his faith as a practicing Catholic, marries and has four children whom he showers with love and kindness. He lives out his solemn oath to never visit abuse upon another human being. (A later accomplishment, his restaurant, Peterson’s in Indiana, is another resounding success.) Yet the author is humble, modest, always taking the time to share his wisdom with family and his greater family, his readers. His adorable refrain – “another God thing” is invoked time and again as the basis for not only his commercial and intellectual success, but for his literal rescue time and again from dangerous and sometimes nearly fatal circumstances.
The author poses fascinating questions. Tracking down some of those siblings later in life, he finds some have succumbed to drink – surrendered to miserable circumstance. Peterson’s saving grace is and always has been his compassion and concern for others – a pole star that has never, in eighty plus years, ever been eclipsed.
In troubled times, or any time, a book like this is welcome; not only welcome but necessary. This is a tonic for troubled times – a hearty vote of confidence for readers facing adverse life situations, doubt, and reversals of fortune. This book is a gem. It is a new wellspring in the tradition of American ingenuity, initiative, and faith in kindness and a guiding force.
