This is the NEW 2nd edition. The 1st edition ranked 4.8 out of 5 stars while on Amazon for 2 1/2 years. According to reader/reviewer Linda Briggs-Harty, "This is the best treatment of child abuse I've seen... The writing is rich, descriptive, fluent, emotionally imbued but spare and authentic. [The] voice in the book, in particular, moves me beyond words." According to reader/reviewer N.R., "I finally had time tonight and read your new edition. I've read your book three times in the past two years, all at different moments when I needed it. And you know what makes yours different from all the other books about child abuse, alcoholism, and mental illness? It's motivating! Not in the cheesy kind of way where it leaves you a few weeks after you've read it, but in a way where the words always seem to stay with you. And it's funny because each time, I get something new from it. I won't bore you with the details, but I do want you to know that I have been praying for two months for a sign over a personal matter, and you're new edition was definitely it and has helped heal those wounds and address a lot of the uncertainties that came with it. I think its amazing how youre able to influence and touch so many different people all suffering from various issues in less than 200 pages. Its simply incredible!" Back of Cover: The movement in Missing the Mark is a series of vignettes or jump cuts, similar to modern cinematic technique, exemplifying the fact that chaotic stories often have an absence of smooth transition and order. Drawing from the text The Wounded Storyteller, this creative nonfiction witness recounts a dysfunctional upbringing within the structure of what Arthur W. Frank purports as The Chaos Narrative. Author Keith Hoerner writes this piece to reclaim himself, to find his voice from beneath an antagonist who made him mute. Surprisingly, in reshaping the fractured pieces of his so-called life, he also discovers the existence of varied selves along the way (not only the ever-present lover but the admitted hater), which he has too long denied. After forty-nine years, he is now able to recognize love and hate can coexist as counter selves in the human heart. Keith [Hoerner] shows skill, control, and sensitivity to language. Michael Castro, PhD, Author of The Bush Years One of the most unflinchingly honest and beautiful theses Id ever read. Eve Jones, MFA, Author of Bird in the Machine

"Throughout this book is the metaphor to archery. Arrows fly; arrows land; arrows miss; arrows hit. The aim isn't merely metaphoric. It's a missed opportunity: a mother to know her son, a father to be the protector... the boy. As the author targets the past and present in a series of well-paced vignettes, we are not left wondering about the destruction of child abuse and the scars it leaves. Text credited to The Wounded Storyteller gives the author a chance to share his questions of faith and existence, a search for meaning. The Day the Sky Broke Open is an engaging read into hurt. Hoerner weaves dialog with honesty and poetic verse. His sense of emotional timing puts the reader in the front row of a house of dysfunction. For those who are self-reflective, have questions of their own-or some experience with abuse, read this book. Lovingly attentive to the complications of the family heart, The Day the Sky Broke Open hits the bull's-eye." -LitStack Keith T. Hoerner, B.S., M.F.A., lives, works, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois. He is the founding editor of The Dribble Drabble Review and has been featured in numerous national / international literary journals, as well as anthologies, and other publications. This is his first book.

Could the answer to one of America's greatest mysteries rest in the old adage: You are what you eat? See in The Lion Walketh Among Us, one in Keith Hoerner's The Story Within the Story Series of short fiction. Proceeds benefit the Saint Louis, Missouri, Gateway Area Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and its Walk MS.