Author Peter Gajdics spent six years in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to “cure” him of his homosexuality.

Kept with other patients in a cult-like home in British Columbia, Canada, Gajdics was under the authority of a dominating, rogue psychiatrist who controlled his patients, in part, by creating and exploiting a false sense of family. Juxtaposed against his parents’ tormented past―his mother’s incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, and his father’s upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary―The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir explores the universal themes of childhood trauma, oppression, and intergenerational pain.

Told over a period of decades, the story shows us the damaging repercussions of conversion therapy and reminds us that resilience, compassion, and the courage to speak the truth exist within us all.

Author: Peter Gajdics
Publisher: Brown Paper Press
Pages: 352pp
Size: 5 x 8
Notes: paperback
Release Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1941932087