Featured Author Dawn Kopman Whidden - A Child Is Torn Book Review

A Child Is Torn: Innocence Lost

By Dawn Kopman Whidden

4 Stars

Review by Rene

This is such a riveting story and involves many characters. The whole premise of the story circles around a young child at the age of 10 named Brad. His parents were found brutally murdered in their home; meanwhile Brad was found covered in blood, playing a video game in the other room. Now the question is.....did he do it? and if he did....why did he do it.

This book also focuses around the lives of two other characters, Officer Marty Keal and Dr. Hope Rubin. Please do not think that this is your typical murder mystery book, all good books always have a romantic story in it as well. Read about these characters along with many others and see how things unfold. 

Brad is admitted to Armistace Mental Health Institution for Children and is now under the care of Dr. Hope Rubin. She is determined to get down to the bottom of it. Marty and Hope made many stops during this investigation trying to learn as much as they could about Brad, trying to see if he had reason to murder his parents and if not him.....who? Brad was a very sweet child who got along with everyone, and was raised by 2 very kind parents. So where is the disconnect? Does Brad have an internal switch and turned into a murderous child, was he put up to it by someone else, or is he taking the blame for someone.

Read the book, enjoy the roller coaster! 

Epilogue

This author has always been intrigued by the Nature versus Nurture argument. It is as profound to me as which came first—The Chicken or the Egg? Where do our personalities come from? I have often wondered why children being raised in the same home by the same parents will have totally different demeanor's and personalities. Some researchers claim that the answer lies in the order of their birth. Others insist our eating habits and the chemicals that are being injected into our food sources have some responsibility. 

Why then do twins—whether identical or fraternal—develop completely different talents and personas? Or why do identical twins who have been raised apart and not even knowing of each other’s existence tend to be attracted to the same type of partner, enjoy the same hobbies, dislike the same foods, and in some known cases even give their children the same names? Is it coincidence or is something more mysterious at work here? 

How can some children like Liz Murray who was raised by dysfunctional and mentally ill parents go from homeless to Harvard? While others who come from a seemingly normal life develop mental illnesses or criminal behaviors? I am sure you, the reader, have often pondered this in your own lives. We all know children who have caused their parents such heartache and parents who have tried to beat down their children’s spirits by horrendous physical and mental abuse only to produce successful and happy adults. 

Can we inherit from our DNA something that can become a stronger force than years of love and nurturing? Can one gene that has been dormant for generations suddenly turn up and turn the most innocent newborn into a monster as the years go by? Should we all take a good look at our future mate’s 

family history before we decide to marry and have a family? 

Will science in the future help us determine if someone’s genetic makeup will produce a Jeffrey Dahmner or Ted Bundy and we can avoid the horrors and heartache that these type of individuals cause? 

Maybe one day we will have the answers and mental illness will be a thing of the past, but until then we will just have to continue to ask the question: Which is the more dominate factor in contributing to who we are—NATURE or NURTURE?

When dependable Evan Madison fails to show up for work, police are dispatched to his home. His ten-year-old son, Brad, is discovered inside, unharmed and seemingly alone. He is stoic, sitting in front of the television playing his favorite video game, Super Mario—and he’s covered in blood.

Veteran Police Officer Marty Keal is the first on the scene. With his many years of experience, he thinks he’s seen it all. That is, until he discovers Brad’s not really alone after all. Upstairs in their bedroom lies the brutally bludgeoned and deceased bodies of both his mother and his father. When questioned, Brad confesses to the horrific murders.

When Brad is transferred to a local mental health institution for children, Dr. Hope Rubin is brought in to evaluate and treat the child. A preliminary investigation shows no evidence of any kind of mistreatment in his past. She must determine the disturbing truth: Is Brad telling the truth? Or is he covering for someone else?

Detective Jean Whitely rounds out the investigative team; and she suspects there is much more to the case than what meets the eye. The happily married mother of two in unwavering in her determination to uncover the real truth about Brad. Was he abused? Or is he the product of an evil seed born to kill?

As the layers of truth about Brad are systematically peeled away, you will be compelled to ask yourself, Which is the more dominate factor in contributing to who we are—NATURE or NURTURE?

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Feature Author Dawn Kopman Whidden - A Child Is Torn Excerpt

A Child is Torn: Innocence Lost

By Dawn Kopeman Whidden

In my mind it was like picturing a scene from a Dickens novel; a ten-year-old child standing in the street with battered and torn rags for clothing, his mind and heart dirtied and shredded. In reality anyone looking at the child would just see a normal, energetic boy running the bases in a pickup baseball game; but all the while, a tortured being was fighting to come to the surface. Anyway, that is what I saw when I looked at Brad Madison, but I was paid to look deeper and find out why he had murdered his parents in cold blood.

I looked out the window of my office in the Armistace Mental Health Institution for Children. I was studying my newest patient. He had been committed one month ago by the courts because he was far too young to go to an adult prison. The judge also felt there was more to the story than was being told. In the end, young Brad was deposited here, under my care. Most of my associates believed these children were never going to be part of normal society—that our job was to keep the world safe by keeping these children locked away. I disagreed. I had hope. My mother must have known, because that’s what she named me the day I came screaming into this world—Hope.

I saw more than just delinquents and insanity when I looked at my patients. I saw inside. I saw the torture, the actions of monsters that made these children who they were. I saw the loss of innocence, and terror no child should ever feel. I saw the invisible labels stamped on their foreheads; schizophrenic, bipolar, body dysmorphic, obsessive compulsive, attention deficit.

I sipped a cup of hot coffee as I looked down at the field below. Judging by the gleeful cheers of the children below, you would think the scene was normal—until you noticed the attendants in white jumpsuits with night sticks and mace on their belts, and the barbed-wire fences surrounding the field. My thoughts were disrupted as chaos erupted below. I strained to see whom the guards were restraining. I was shocked to see it was Brad, screaming and fighting to get away from his captors. A nurse ran over to help restrain him, injecting him with a tranquilizer. As I watched his small body collapsed into their arms; I dropped my coffee, sending it splattering across the papers on my desk.

“Damn it,” I muttered. I knew I should stop and try to salvage them, but instead I quickly made my way down the two flights of stairs.

How had I missed what happened? Had I turned away the minute Brad attacked the other child?

“Get a medic,” I screamed as I looked at the boy lying unconscious on the ground. “Call 911. Get some help!” I pushed away an aide who was leaning down trying to attend to the boy. It was Jeffrey, a twelve-year-old who had been with us for two years. I felt for a pulse and was relieved when I got a strong one, but Jeffrey was still lying unconscious. I heard noises behind me; the rushing of the attendants and nurses and

teachers corralling the other children and bringing them back to their dorms.

“What happened?” Someone was carrying the now sedated Brad into the building. This is going to be a major setback, I thought, but then I remembered I’d gotten very little from this child in our sessions. His ice-blue eyes were a fortress for the secrets he was not yet willing to expose.

An attendant answered me. “Brad was batting, and when Jeffrey called the ball a strike, that’s exactly what he did. He just whipped around with the bat and struck Jeffrey in the head. "It was so fast, I couldn't stop it.”

I wiped the blood off the side of Jeffrey’s face, and pushed his hair back, looking for the wound. A large purple bruise was slowing forming on his temple. The boy was still breathing and his eyelids were beginning to flutter; he was regaining consciousness. The attendants around me were shaking their heads with bored, complacent looks on their faces. It was obvious that many of them thought Jeffrey had it coming.

Jeffrey had never been anyone’s favorite. Although he was only twelve years old, he was tall for his age and already had facial hair. An aide was assigned the task of grooming him—we couldn't trust him with a razor. Jeffrey had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder because of his sociopathic tendencies. He’d been admitted to our clinic after several failed attempts to find him a foster family. Jeffrey had failed to show anyone—staff or patients—any admirable traits. Usually we bonded with the children on some level, but even I had trouble connecting with him—and it bothered me. I think we were all shocked that Brad attacked Jeffrey and not the other way around.

I got up when I heard the sirens as they entered the premises. Two paramedics ran to where I was standing over Jeffrey, and reluctantly, I let them take over. I was pretty confident that Jeffrey had suffered a concussion and although we had some medical facilities on the premises we weren't equipped with the more sophisticated machinery like a CAT SCAN machine which would be needed in this case. Besides I knew I had a new priority; I needed to see Brad. I needed to see why this tiny skeleton of a child, no more than four feet eight inches tall, had felt the need to once again resort to violence.

“Hope, hang on there,” a voice called out from behind me. It was Judy, my supervisor. “They have Brad sedated in room twelve,” Judy informed me. The staff often referred to room twelve as the “safe room.” It had a bed with restraints, padded walls so the patients couldn't hurt themselves, and around-the-clock monitoring. Sometimes the confinement could last as long as a week; but generally with these children, it was

usually only a day or two.

“I have to report this to the authorities as an assault,” she said, looking at me with tired, gray eyes. Judy had been here for eighteen years; she expected days like these. She was usually good at hiding her fatigue, but we all had our bad days.

“I know,” I replied, sighing. It meant I was running out of time. Brad might have to go back to court and possibly be charged as an adult. It was rare for the authorities to come into the establishment to remove a child—but it had happened.

“Just give me more time to find out what happened,” I said to Judy as much as to myself. I heard the voices of police officers coming down the hallway, the sound of their rubber soles sticking to the freshly waxed floors. I recognized the taller one of the officers he had been to the facility on several other occasions; he was kind and his smile was large and bright.

“Dr. Rubin,” he said, “may I see Brad?” “Officer Keal, Brad is sedated and it will be quite a while before he can be questioned.” I remembered that it had been Officer Keal that was the first officer on the scene when Brad was discovered covered in blood, playing video game on the floor of his parents’ living room. Upstairs laid the bloodied and battered bodies of the little boy’s parents.

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Featured Author Dawn Kopman Whidden

I would like to start off the next two weeks of festivities with a quick introduction. I will be featuring an amazing author Dawn Kopman Whidden. I have had the greatest pleasure of working with her for the past few weeks and reading some of the most compelling stories. 

 


Dawn's first novel was A Child is Torn, published in December 2012. Storyline: When dependable Evan Madison fails to show up for work, police are dispatched to his home. His ten-year-old son, Brad, is discovered inside, unharmed and seemingly alone. He is stoic, sitting in front of the television playing his favorite video game, Super Mario—and he’s covered in blood. s the layers of truth about Brad are systematically peeled away, you will be compelled to ask yourself, Which is the more dominate factor in contributing to who we are—NATURE or NURTURE?






Dawn's second novel Faceless was published in November 2013. Storyline: A pretty teenage girl is found dead in the woods, her face horribly mutilated. A few days later, a second girl, also strikingly beautiful, is attacked in a similar fashion. Who would do such a brutal thing—and why? Through it all, Jean and Marty must unravel a multi-layered mystery and put a face on the unseen villain, before anyone else ends up dead…and faceless.





Dawn's most recent release Stolen, published June 2014. Storyline: In the riveting mystery novel Stolen, detective Marty Keal is on leave handling personal business when he is drawn back into a case with all of the makings of a sinister event. His partner, detective Jean Whitley, is first on the scene of a horrible crime that took place in a cabin in the woods. She arrives to find an older man dead, a younger man seriously wounded and a half naked child in the back of the cabin who’s apparently been missing for 3 months. Then, the detective finds a little boy running through the woods with little clothes and barely able to communicate. 


Although all of Dawn Kopman Whidden books are not a series, you will find her main characters in each story, you do not have to read them in order. 

Dawn Kopman Whidden is a native New York author who grew up in the close-knit community of Little Neck Douglaston during the baby boomer era. She graduated from Queensboro Community college.

Twenty years ago, she traded in her days of living in the bustling city for a more serene and tranquil life on a small farm in the town of Bell, located in North Central Florida.

She is retired and shares her life and love with her husband of fourteen years and an adopted stray dog she named Casey. She has also been blessed with two beautiful grandchildren.

Come Party with us as we celebrate the works of Dawn!! We have a great raffle-copter with a few e-books, teasers, excerpts and more!!!

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