Wade Oliver

Born Gray in a Black and White World Wade Oliver

Publisher Marketing: From the moment I was born in the Psychiatric ward at the University of Minnesota Hospital in 1965, Minnesota would never be the same. With a little naivety on my mothers' part back in the early 70's, a little boy had more leash to explore than a little boy should have had. Combined with a stepfathers influence that was geared more for inmates at Alcatraz, a wild pony was created and set loose into the world until being reigned in at the age of 24. In the book I chronicle many of the events in my life up to the present. By the time I was eleven years old I had crashed two cars; the second on Hwy 100 in the middle of the day. I had an extraterrestrial visit, been chased by the police on the back of my drunken step dad's motorcycle, and had done and seen numerous other things that were years to early. The craziness of my life continued throughout my school years, into the military and then as a young adult man after the Air Force. What makes this book special is the transparency of my failures, successes, fears, and hopes from my heart that are common to most people as I became an adolescent and a man; as well as those things that are unique to having one foot in and one foot out of the white European and black African gene pool. This book is more than a rollercoaster ride and window into my life. It answers the two most important questions that are at the core of every human heart; 'who am I and what is my purpose'? I show how God rescued me from myself and transformed my life without removing my playful and sometimes zany antics.