How is family portrayed in The Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer?

Family is one of the most significant themes of Dave Pelzer’s memoir The Lost Boy. Young David’s relationship with family is profoundly negative at the outset of the book. His mother is a nightmarish figure who subjects him to terrible abuse and frequently drinks herself into a rage. His father is unable or unwilling to stop this abuse, and his brothers are forced to witness and participate in it. Pelzer impersonally refers to his biological family as “The Family” and their house as “The House.” It’s clear that David doesn’t view The Family as his true family or The House as his true home. Once he enters the foster system, his experience of family begins to change and, on the whole, to improve. Caring foster parents like the Catanzes and the Turnboughs show David that a family can (and should be) a positive, supportive thing. Still, David is always aware that these families and homes are temporary and that, along with the many other children he shares each set of foster parents with, he will continue to be moved from home to home, family to family, until he turns eighteen. David ends up leaving his last foster family, the Turnboughs, to strike out on his own as an Army recruit. By the end of the memoir he has finally found a true family of his own with his wife and son, and with it peace.