Thirty-four years ago, during my junior year at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, I got a job working weekends for the Department of Mental Health. From Friday evening to Sunday evening I lived in a halfway home for the “mentally handicapped” (the term used then) while the regular staff person rested. During my senior year, I moved full-time into a newly founded home that was part of L’Arche—a faith-based community where persons with developmental disabilities and “normal” persons lived together and learned from each other with as few barriers between them as possible. In those days, autism as a diagnosis was reserved for those persons in the very low-functioning end of the spectrum. And even in those cases, likely as not, the diagnosis would be of a known mental illness rather than autism. Looking back, however, I know that some of the young men and women I lived with were persons who fell within the autism spectrum, including Asperger’s syndrome. This book in a small way acknowledges the gifts of these young people and in particular the gift of love I received from them.

I want to dedicate this book to my nephew Nicholas, who I know will one day read this book with pride in his ability to overcome the negative aspects of autism. I want to thank Ann and Jack Syverson for their support; Faye Bender, my agent, for her unwavering faith through the many years it took to bring this book to life; and Cheryl Klein, my editor, for her dazzling vision, solid direction, and in-the-trenches hard work. She is a co-creator. And finally, I thank my wife, Jill Syverson-Stork, for her insight, her patience, her contagious hope.