One man's horrific memoir of sexual abuse at the hands of his all-American father. The book opens in Tallahassee, Fla., just after the Cuban missile crisis. Nine-year-old Walter de Milly is awakened by his father, who leads him to their backyard bomb shelter, bolts the heavy lead door, and molests him. Shortly thereafter, the child watches his father drive to his job at the bank, "his white shirt crisp against his Presbyterian back.'' More than 30 years later, de Milly, who has actually gone into business with his dad, picks up the phone and hears an angry neighbor speak an ugly truth: "Your father molested my son.'' At the neighbor's insistence, the family finally confronts their father's pedophilia and takes drastic action: Walter de Milly senior, the smiling, silver-haired pillar of the community undergoes surgical castration. This book recounts the author's attempts to grapple not only with the lingering effects of the maltreatment he suffered from infancy through adolescence, but also with his own homosexuality and the complex blend of hatred, pity, contempt, and love he feels for his aging and increasingly infirm father. As his loving, impossibly naive mother looks on, seeing nothing, the father emerges here as a monster out of Norman Rockwell, a man who molests his son while reading aloud from the Bible, and leaves him helpful notes that read "Smile, and the world smiles with you!'' Throughout the book, deMilly periodically assumes the point of view of his younger self, and re-creates the full force of a child's hapless bewilderment during his traumatic experiences. When the author finally dares to confront his father, the elder de Milly treats years of incest as a minor character flaw and says, simply, "I hoped you'd forgotten about it.'' In an age where such tales have become so commonplace that they have lost some of their ability to shock, the raw power of deMilly's writing ensures that readers will long remember his disturbing story. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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A family portrait.
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And if there is another truth that brightens in the absence of fear, it is perhaps that tragedy can be the most defining portal through which to witness an act of grace. Walter de Milly's memoir is that act of grace."
"An amazing memoir of incest. In a calm and beautiful voice, de Milly takes us on a horrific adventure, untwisting the wreckage of his youth. In the end, he stares down his father's soul with an honesty that heals his own. This book is unforgettable."
This is a short book, but it's so full of insights, poetry, drama, the movements of the soul, that when you come to its end you've been on a long journey. I loved it for its exactness of language, its mature sensibility, its understanding that seems to go beyond the phrase "surviving incest." Read this book not for information about incest survival, but to encounter the deepest battles and survival of the soul.
"This is the most detailed and utterly plausible account I've ever read of what it feels like to be an abused child, and it is told with cinematic presence and verisimilitude. The anger, the love, the evasiveness and jealousy and confusion, the need to dissociate oneself from one's own actions and reactions--all are presented in a harrowing narrative, which is as tragic as a Greek drama and as engrossing as a Victorian novel. The unexpected element in this book-which falls on the reader like manna--is its nourishing, exquisite lyricism."
"Walter de Milly has written a sensitive and compelling account of father-son incest. In spite of the suffering portrayed, the account also gives testimony to the strength of family bonds, and to the courage and resilience of the human spirit"
"Beautiful prose...
"With so many books written by and for professionals dealing with sexual abuse, why should the busy clinician spend a couple of hours reading "In My Father's Arms? As a clinician working with both abusers and male survivors, I believe this book helps the reader better understand the victim's coping strategies (often dysfunctional in the long run), the phenomenon of splitting at different ages, effects on sexuality, and how victims unwittingly contribute to the distorted thinking of the abuser...De Milly's first hand account [is] written in a flowing prose closer to Nabokov than the other books subjectively penned in pain by survivors, or more objectively written by clinicians who must work with them"
"In My Father's Arms is an astonishing book--concise, lyrical, unflinching, honest. It allows the reader to gaze upon things that in less accomplished prose would be unbearable."
"Prior to the late 1980's, books about male sexual victimization were hard to find or non-existent. Books authored by male survivors were often privately printed tomes of hurt and were painful to read, not only for the content, but the quality of writing. It was a pleasant surprise to read Walter A. de Milly's account of his sexual abuse by his father, a prominent citizen in Tallahassee, Florida. Set in the Ozzie and Harriet era of the 1950's and 1960's this book includes scenes in the family's nuclear bomb shelter (remember those?). The author makes a disagreeable topic almost enjoyable to read with his wonderful literary style. Coincidentally, as I was reading this slim (133 pages) book, I was also re-reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, the award-winning journey into the mind of a pedophile. (I first read Lolita as a young adolescent and didn't appreciate its literary merit, instead looking for the "hot" scenes - but I was 13 and she was 12; close enough for a good masturbation book.) De Milly offers no arousal potential as he provides a layman's portrayal of a child's mind dissociating from the incomprehensible feelings and experiences the went through at the hands of his father. The author takes the reader from his childhood to adolescence to adulthood and back again in an almost random wandering, yet he moves through time without leaving the reader confused or feeling jet-lagged. Of particular interest to professionals working with offenders is the infuriating denial and ignorance of the therapeutic community which ascribed young Walter's chronicles of his father's abusive acts as "a fantasy wish of [my] homosexuality and the psychologist tried to cure [me] of it." Other therapists were either inadequate or abusive in their own right to the young man trying to make sense of his experiences and sexual orientation confusion. When de Milly, as a young adult working in his father's insurance business, is told by a neighbor that the father has molested his son, Walter is given the choice of confronting his father - and forcing him into therapy - or the neighbor will go to the police. This precipitates a family crisis which not only takes the father's power away in the family but also brings him to a psychiatrist who insists the most acceptable means of dealing with this problem is surgical castration. The father agrees to take weekly shots of "anti-sex hormones" and claims he has the problem under control. "Like a naughty little boy who simply couldn't absorb the significance of the bad things he had done," deMilly writes, "Dad maintained his perplexed and confused mien." The family agrees that castration would be best to help protect the family name, fearing that psychotherapy might lead to word leaking out. They opt for the surgery in a faraway city. His spirit broken, the once powerful incestuous father declines in health with his outwardly respectable family. With so many books written by and for professionals dealing with sexual abuse, why should the busy clinician spend a couple hours reading In My Father's Arms? As a clinician working with both abusers and survivors, I believe this book helps the reader better understand the victim's coping strategies (often dysfunctional in the long run), the phenomenon of splitting at different ages, effects on sexuality, and how victims can unwittingly contribute to the distorted thinking of the abuser. Lest we tend to identify too much with our abuser client's issues and pain, it is good balance to remember the needs of many victims and survivors. With his father dying, de Milly sought answers to that often unanswerable question, "Why?" "I wanted Dad to show me his injuries. I wanted him to beg for forgiveness, to cry in rage against his own malefactor, but his composure never disintegrated." De Milly's first hand account of his relationship with his abuser and other family members, experiences with therapists, his journey to find his sexual identity, are written in a flowing prose closer to Nabokov than the other books subjectively penned in pain by survivors or more objectively written by clinicians who work with them. It is worth the read." -- Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), Ken Singer, LSCW
Amazon Reviews:
With his measured, nearly dreamlike voice, deMilly takes us back to the 60's South and to the family bomb shelter where the sexual abuse began in earnest, allowing the reader inside the mind and soul of a young boy who is now locked in anguished sexual conflict with his handsome and smiling father. From this chilling opening, the writer unfolds his story of pain and gut determination to survive, creating unforgettable portraits of the people and events around him. One comes away from 'In my Father's Arms' with the feeling of having just encountered an instant classic."
His descriptions vividly illustrate the experience of dissociation and splitting. This book has given me the clearest understanding of multiple personality disorder. Through memories he explains the psyche of his father (which is very disturbing), and how his father maintained control over him and secrecy over the incest. We also learn about the culture he grew up in through the reactions to his homosexuality, the keeping of secrets for the purpose of upholding social images, and the belief that incest is a fantasy and not a reality. The reaction of his parents and psychiatrist to his homosexuality and emerging incest memories is heart breaking. He deserved so much more than how he was treated and misunderstood. The difficulties of dealing with incest compounded by the discovery of his homosexuality (being different, having crushes in high school), and then to be misunderstood and put through therapies to make him heterosexual, while his father (a pedophile) was praised as a great man. Throughout the entire book we catch glimmers of hope, and ultimately he is able to end the secrecy and to triumph. He reclaims himself from the lies and abuse. I even began to feel compassion towards his father. He was a sick man, and he was not able to fully face the truth of what he had done before his death (though he never denied that he abused his son or the other boys). The treatment he received disturbed me. I wish there had been a way for everyone in the family to receive better psychotherapy. Walter de Milly writes beautifully. I loved reading about his connections to other people, and especially his friendship with Wallace.
Thank you, Walter
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A Brilliantly Crafted Memoir, an Unforgettable Story... 
An Enlightening Memoir