[Dialogue] "Order Kid" David Marshall's New Book: IRON BOY: Searching for Freedom Inside a Family Religious Order

[K & D Marshall]

Twenty years in germination, I am finally ready to publish my memoir about
my experiences in the Order, Ecumenical Institute, and Institute of
Cultural Affairs: *IRON BOY: Searching for Freedom Inside a Family
Religious Order*. It covers twelve years, starting when I was six years old
in 1962 as my family joined a several other minister families in a big
house in Evanston, Illinois, followed by the next five years on the Chicago
West Side campus until the historical fires after MLK Jr’s death drove us
out, and then six years of youth deployment in Iowa, New York City, Kuala
Lumpur, Denver, and San Jose CA. Finally, a 40-year-old self weighs in. The
story is told in my boy’s voice, with limited vocabulary and awareness at
first, which matures as I become more knowledgeable and conscious in my
teenage years and beyond.

*Who is it for?* IRON BOY is primarily for former members of these three
extraordinary organizations and their extended families. It is for the
remaining “Order Adults” and “Order Kids,” but also for ICA folks who never
lived the monastic Order life. It is for “Spirit Movement” people who never
become interns and priors. It is for the Order Kids’ partners and their
children, like my own two kids, who only heard about these revolutionary
times second hand. It is for my cousin Randy, whom I visited every summer
in Oklahoma in the 1960s during my brief respites from Order life, who
recently told me, “The 'normal' of your childhood was always unfathomable
to me.” In a broader sense, it is for anyone struggling with "group think"
and "us vs. them." Long from now, it is for my children’s children.

*What is it about?* Having spent 16 years in the book publishing business,
we always asked prospective authors, “What’s the Big Idea of your book?” If
they could not say it in a couple of sentences, we asked them to return to
the drawing board. IRON BOY is about FREEDOM of the human spirit in the way
we taught it in RS-1 on Saturday afternoon with the Freedom Lecture and the
Bonhoeffer paper, followed by the *Requiem for a Heavyweight *movie that
evening. It deconstructs my first RS-1 in the West Side chapel at eleven
years old. But if you are looking for a black and white treatment of the
Order, EI, and ICA, this book is not for you. It is neither a blanket
indictment of these three organizations nor a love fest about them. In my
opinion, it is a nuanced view that may make some readers cheer and others
recoil. But it is an honest portrayal of a boy’s rite of passage from
darkness to spirit freedom.

*When and where can I read it?* It will be published on June 15, 2025 on
Amazon. You can pre-order the e-book now
<https://www.amazon.com/IRON-BOY-Search-Freedom-Religious-ebook/dp/B0F3Y36V86/>,
but you must wait until the publication date to order the paperback
(Amazon’s rules, not mine). The e-book costs U.S. $9.99 and the paperback
costs U.S. $19.99. For those of you who are my Facebook friends, or follow
me on other social media sites, I have been doing a 10-week countdown every
Sunday starting earlier this month. I usually share several photos and
something about the book. You can see the weekly countdown on my Marshall
Books blog <https://marshallbooks.wordpress.com/>.

David Marshall, Moraga, California

Link: Iron Boy Pre-Order:
https://www.amazon.com/IRON-BOY-Search-Freedom-Religious-ebook/dp/B0F3Y36V86/

Link: 10-Week Book Launch Countdown: https://marshallbooks.wordpress.com/



-- 
www.marshallbooks.net
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