Middle Child, Broken Home

In Middle Child, Broken Home, Matt Baxter doesn’t sentimentalize childhood, divorce, or family loyalty. He dissects them. Growing up in the 1960s as the overlooked middle child in a fractured household, Baxter learns early that survival has less to do with healing than with adaptation—and that humor is often just rage with better timing. Raised by a single mother and a grandmother who believed strength mattered more than softness, Baxter moves through boyhood absorbing rules no one explains and punishments no one remembers giving. Fathers disappear. Brothers compete. Love arrives inconsistently, often disguised as criticism. What remains is the long, quiet work of becoming a man without a template—and without much patience for excuses. Darkly funny, unsentimental, and unafraid to offend, Middle Child, Broken Home is for readers who don’t want inspiration—they want recognition.