Often when searching for our heroes, we explore through history or the stand out performers in the fields to which we, ourselves, aspire. What is most compelling is when we aren’t seeking out a hero at all and one happens to appear on our path in the course of doing our job, organizing our own list of goals and priorities, or simply reflecting on our life. We just never know where angels dare to tread. I have just found a new hero in a book.

When I meet Paul Miller, he is an eight year old boy. He seized my hand in his own and embarked on a trip that was to last nine years. In those years, I never let go of his hand. Not once. It was a harrowing journey, not through the nostalgia of penny candy, nickel ice-cream cones, and pea-green Hudsons, but through the character forging of a man. It was through locked doors, dark alleys, blackened eyes, and pain. It was through an anguish and a solitude no young boy should know about.

Paul’s journey propelled him through the innocence of a child into an adulthood that was a lifetime ahead of itself. It carried him through experiences some only think about and then shudder at the thought. He groped through the murky tunnel of innumerable questions no young mind should have to ask, his only clues coming from an old black man with a ‘jiggy’ pole by the name of Noah. Paul emerged from that tunnel with an inner wisdom that would be envied by most at seventy. He was only seventeen.

In his book, Paul Miller reveals his story of searching for “A Place to Belong”. Ironically, whether the reader is nine or ninety, he will have found one in their heart.