One Foot In Eden

One Foot in Eden

The year is 1951 and Holland Winchester, the local thug and a war veteran, has gone missing from his small, backwater South Carolina town. The local sheriff, Will Alexander, has a gut feeling Holland's been murdered but the sheriff can find neither the body nor the killer. He has his suspects but no evidence. And his suspects have their stories, their motives and their truths. But secrets can only stay buried so long. Told from the perspective of the sheriff, a local farmer, his wife, their son and the sheriff's deputy, One Foot in Eden explores the crime, shifting suspicion, blame and guilt with each new voice. This brilliant southern gothic novel observes the consequences of love and murder across generations.

One foot in Eden

One Foot in Eden

A comparative sociological account of eight different therapeutic communities, One Foot in Eden, originally published in 1988, was the first study in this area to compare observational material from such a large number of settings. The communities chosen represent the wide variety of therapeutic community practice at the time: a residential Rudolf Steiner school for mentally handicapped children; two contrasting residential psychiatric units; a community for the treatment of addiction; a communally organised community for mentally handicapped and disturbed young people; a psychiatric day hospital; and two contrasting halfway houses for disturbed adolescents. All these places are recognised therapeutic communities seeking to mobilise the social life of the community as an instrument of therapy, yet, as this study shows, they follow different (and sometimes antithetical) treatment practices. The book also directs new light on other areas, of particular concern to sociologists, such as the general properties of therapeutic work and the socialisation process as it is experienced by new community residents. It will be of special interest to therapeutic community staff, to sociologists of medicine and occupations, and to others involved in the care of disturbed and handicapped people.