’s Memoirs Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A Child Called: One Child’s Courage to Survive | 1995 | Buy |
| The Lost Boy: A Foster Child’s Search for the Love of a Family | 1997 | Buy |
| A Man Named Dave: A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness | 1999 | Buy |
| My Story | 2002 | Buy |
| The Privilege of Youth: A Teenager’s Story | 2004 | Buy |
| Too Close to Me: The Middle-Aged Consequences of Revealing a Child Called It | 2014 | Buy |
| Return to the River | 2023 | Buy |
Self-Help Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Help Yourself: Finding Hope, Courage, And Happiness | 2000 | Buy |
| Dave Pelzer’s Life Lessons: From a Man Who Knows | 2000 | Buy |
| Help Yourself for Teens: Real-Life Advice for Real-Life Challenges | 2005 | Buy |
| Moving Forward: Taking the Lead in Your Life | 2008 | Buy |
Dave Pelzer grew up in Daly City, California, and endured years of severe abuse at the hands of his mother before being removed from the home by school officials in 1973. He went on to serve in the US Air Force and later turned his experience into a writing career, beginning with A Child Called It in 1995. The book became an unexpected bestseller and stayed on the New York Times list for years, prompting a follow-up trilogy that traced his life through foster care and into adulthood.
His memoir series covers the full arc from abuse to recovery, with each book taking on a different phase of his life. The Lost Boy follows his years in foster care, A Man Named Dave covers his adult life and search for stability, and later volumes reflect on how his story changed after it became widely read. Return to the River, published in 2023, marks the most recent addition to the memoir sequence.
Alongside the memoirs, Pelzer wrote four self-help books applying the lessons of his own resilience to readers facing their own hardships. Help Yourself and its follow-up volumes are written in a direct, accessible style aimed at readers who want practical guidance rather than abstract advice. Together, the two bodies of work reflect a career built on converting personal suffering into something useful for others.