Cold Turkey at Nine: The Memoir of a Problem Child

Having been born on April Fool’s Day, author Earl B. Russell likes to imagine that in an early sign of his precocious nature, the doctor dried him off, held him up for his mother to see, and then listened as the baby looked at his mother and exclaimed, “April Fool!” Russell’s mother knew he was a problem child right off the bat. At first glance, his older brother told everyone Russell would never amount to anything—so much for making a good first impression! As his life began in a rural Ten...