Book Review: The Children We Left Behind

by Adam B. Coleman

Looking for a book to enjoy this Easter holiday without feeling like you’re wasting time? Something honest, absorbing, and actually worth reading? Adam B. Coleman’s The Children We Left Behind might be just it.

It’s not just another memoir. It’s a clear-eyed look at what happens when children are left behind emotionally and physically—and what it takes to face that pain without hiding behind excuses. Coleman writes from his own experience of being abandoned by his father, but the book is really about something bigger: the quiet crisis of broken families and the cultural denial that allows it to persist.

What I appreciate most is that Coleman doesn’t soften the truth to make it more palatable. He holds absentee parents accountable, but he also acknowledges the deeper pattern—that many of them were abandoned themselves. He’s not excusing it, but he’s explaining the cycle. Something only possibel because he has clearly healed and can look at his past without bitterness.

My favorite candid m…