Aaron Fette lived with mental illness all his life. At age 15, he envisioned himself as a modern-day Jack Kerouac, living an adventure on the road that he would chronicle in his writing. Instead, he found himself fleeing from paranoid delusions that drove him from city to city. As a victim of abuse and someone who perpetuated violence, as a drug addict and alcoholic, and as a survivor of the US justice system, Aaron’s story offers a unique perspective on some of the thorniest issues in our society today. He died of an opioid overdose in a homeless encampment under Interstate 35 in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 2, 2017.

His mother, Claudette, alternates his narrative with her own, walking through a clear-eyed self-appraisal as a teenage mom struggling to support her son, who started life with many adverse childhood experiences and her own failures throughout his life.

Aaron’s life illustrates the consequences of that abuse as it reverberated through the rest of his life. When he landed on the streets at fifteen years old after numerous ineffective interventions, Claudette became an occupational therapist, and later a college professor, seeking to better enable youth, families, and people living with mental illness in her community. She began to understand where systems had failed them, and the search led her to communities of family advocates and other professionals who were developing best practices in mental health.

Claudette weaves Aaron’s first-person accounts of his struggles together with her own. No Saints Here presents their experiences as a cautionary tale while offering better alternatives based on Claudette’s years as a scholar and therapist. They share their hard lessons to encourage us to reject ignorance and accelerate the development of a smarter, healthier culture for generations to follow.