Raised behind iron gates in Chernivtsi, in a system built to erase individuality. This is the book about the beginning — the orphanage, the foster years, and the boy who decided that leaving was the only plan worth having.
Who it is for
Readers who want the story from its first page, and anyone who has wondered what an orphanage childhood in post-Soviet western Ukraine looks like from a boy's height. I do not write trauma for its own sake. If a scene is in the book, it is because it is true and it moved something.
Look inside
“The winters were harsh and biting cold... even inside, I would wear a hat, gloves, and a scarf around my mouth.”
Third edition, in preparation
Returning as The Boy Behind Iron Gates: A Memoir of a Ukrainian Orphanage, Foster Care, and Finding Home. Revised and expanded under my own name, with the Ukraine of my childhood restored to the page: Chernivtsi’s cobblestone streets, the Carpathians on the horizon, and a country whose own iron gates were falling open around a boy watching one gate of his own.
From the book
“In that moment, I forgot about the three dollars in my pocket.”
On the listing
This book is published under the name Vitaly Magidov. Everything else here is under Vitaly Kirkpatrick — same person, and something I am in the process of reconciling.
Where it sits
This is Book One. It ends where the next one begins; the story then continues, in order, in Book Two.
Read or buy
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