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Start giftingRunning from the Mirror
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreAs quickly as his face disappeared, so did his mother and father.
Just three days after he was born, Howard Shulman contracted an infection that attacked his face, devouring his nose, lips, lower right eyelid, tear ducts, and palate. Abandoned at the hospital by his parents, he became a ward of New Jersey under the care of a state-employed surgeon who experimentally rebuilt his face.
Running from the Mirror is a poignant story of one man's struggle to survive against staggering odds and create a meaningful life for himself. With unapologetic candor, Howard gives an unflinching account of growing up a bullied outcast, with no family to officially call his own. Relying on little more than street smarts and grit, he rises from dishwasher to successful entrepreneur. Along the way, a European actress, a schoolteacher, and a fiery Latina help transform his life.
Filled with heart-wrenching suffering as well as soul-lifting joy, Running from the Mirror is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Howard Shulman was born in Orange, New Jersey. After he lost half his face to a staph infection as a newborn and his parents abandoned him, he spent his early childhood confined to a hospital. Years later, a veteran of the foster care system and a homeless dropout, he did what he had to do to turn his life around. His shrewd business sense and street smarts, along with the kindness of key figures, helped him escape his dire straits to become the owner of a thriving business and a happily married man. Howard lives in San Diego, with his wife and two stepdaughters.
David de Vries can be seen in a number of feature films, including The Founder, The Accountant, Captain America: Civil War, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. On television, his credits include House of Cards, Nashville, Halt and Catch Fire, the National Geographic film Killing Reagan, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for HBO. As a veteran stage actor, David appeared as Lumiere in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, as Dr. Dillamond in the Los Angeles and Chicago companies of Wicked, and in hundreds of shows in regional theaters throughout the country. He is an Audie and Odyssey Award-winning narrator for his performance in Pam Munoz Ryan's Echo and has voiced over 100 titles in every genre, including his Audie Award-nominated performance of the 2011 Caldecott winner A Sick Day for Amos McGee.