A Book Review: A Beautiful World by Gregg Milligan

Gregg Tyler Milligan writes in his book, "A Beautiful World," about the horrors that he experienced growing up in Michigan as a son of alcoholic parents. He was one of six siblings born to a vile evil mother who tormented and tortured her children more and more as her alcoholism progressed.

Gregg tried to protect his sister along with his older brother Carter, whom he idolized. As children raised with insanity they didn't always know that their parents were the crazy ones. They had to steal food to survive, and hide to keep alive. It is a miracle that they survived with their lives, letting alone their sanity.

Gregg is a true hero as well as a miracle. He didn't know how to tie his shoes or how to read until he was able to get the courage to call one of his older sisters for help. Tragically he thought as a child thinks,and believed that he had to wait until the next beating to call her. She had told them that the next time their mother beat them that they should call her and she would get them out of the house.

The older siblings bore scars also from having lived with the abuse and insanity inflicted on them. They escaped from the madness as soon as they were able. Gregg and his brother Carter would be left to take care of their little sister Lynn, although it was more of an excuse to beat Greg than out of real concern for their daughter.

One night when their parents were out bar hopping, the boys couldn't find Lynn. They were terrified of the attic but were sure that she was hiding there. They could hear her whimpers and had to be brave enough to go in the attic to find her. After agonizing and paralyzing fear, they were able to get her out of the attic. She was as terrified of her parents as they were. She said that her mother said that their father was going to rape her. Later they found out that there was probably truth to that possibility because the older sisters said that their father raped them.

Ironically the father didn't physically abuse the kids on a regular basis, excluding raping the daughters. He beat their mother who in turn beat them. Gregg was her main target. He was gentle, loving and kind. He was totally devoted to her and feared for her life. One time he saved her from drowning, passed out in the bathtub. He received a beating for that too. She strangled him repeatedly to the point of near death. Carter rescued him countless times. Gregg was tortured on a daily basis by his mother.

Summers were an escape from the taunts and humiliation at school. When they were not being soul murdered at home, they were getting tormented, mocked and made fun of at school.

If the starvation, filth, terror, and physical, verbal, and sexual abuse was not enough, the sexual rapes and gleeful sadistic pleasure that his mother got out of prostituting Gregg was the most unspeakable of all of her behaviors. She not only raped her son repeatedly but also would twist his genitals and slap him if he did not make her come to orgasm. I have never heard of a mother as monstrous as theirs.

One night after a night of drinking and bar hopping, Greg's mother and father came home, drunk and violent. Gregg's father beat their mother so badly that her eye literally popped out of the socket. After the beating he left the house, her unconscious alone with the children who witnessed it all. One of the kids called 911. When the paramedics arrived they resuscitated their mother. She nearly died. For a brief period the kids had a reprieve from her monstrous torment.

Gregg and his siblings were finally rescued from the living hell that they were raised in. Their childhood was stolen from them. There was a succession of foster homes and nearly unbearable loneliness. The story does not stop with hopelessness. Gregg was able to survive and thrive because of his will to live, and succeed. He had a thirst for knowledge and was eager for love and acceptance, which he found from some adults who loved him and saw in him his gentle and loving spirit. He is a survivor. He went from being tortured, with love only from his siblings, to graduating with honors from Siena University, in Adrian Michigan. He is a very successful businessman and yet his greatest joy and accomplishment that he proudly admits to is his son, whom he has raised only with love and kindness.

If you ever feel like you cannot overcome your past, you need to read about someone who had every excuse in the book to give up and be a failure. He is an inspiration. He bears his soul in this book to help others to know that they are not alone, and that there is always hopeas long as there is life and God, especially when there is at least one person who believes in you.