Upward Bound

by Woody Brown

Genres: General Fiction; Coming of Age; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A wondrous, deeply affecting portrait of the interlocking lives at an adult day care center in Southern California, depicting an often overlooked community with extraordinary wit and grace—by a major new literary voice hailed as a “groundbreaking debut novelist” (Publishers Weekly)

“[A] singular debut novel.”—The New York Times
“Implosive and wonderfully inspirational.”—Paul Beatty
“Great characters, great pace, great story—reading Upward Bound is a complicated joy.”—Roddy Doyle
“It will change the way you look at the world.”—Angie Kim
“A moving, illuminating glimpse into a world we rarely have access to.”—Good Housekeeping
“Woody Brown accomplishes the seemingly impossible.”—Mona Simpson
“This captivating work illuminates a world too often ignored.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A Most Anticipated Book: The New York Times, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Alta Journal, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, Publishers Lunch

Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles’s disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister, Mariana; Jorge, the gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center’s pool who feels out of her depth. Then there’s Dave, Upward Bound’s director, who came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the center’s irrepressible clients. Framing these intertwined narratives—and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways—is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.

In Upward Bound, Woody Brown has created an indelible, authentic, and profoundly moving group portrait of autism and other disabilities, all illuminated by his empathy, sly sense of humor, and enormous gifts as a novelist. With remarkable sophistication, insight, and creativity, Brown depicts a community too-often invisible in literature and society. Filled with characters you won’t soon forget, Upward Bound will inspire and touch you, teaching you as much about yourself as the tender, miraculous world behind the center’s doors.

Release date: March 31, 2026

Publisher: Hogarth

Print pages: 208

Sample

The Eloper

The best I could come up with was, “Thomas has left the station.”

I was sitting in the rec room, waiting to be told what to do next, when I saw Jorge slip out via the back door that leads to the pool and the parking lot. There were probably a dozen of us inmates in the rec room. A few staffers were there, but they were huddled in a group, talking with great animation about an episode of Love Island. Mom wouldn’t watch that show so I hadn’t seen it, either. Sounds contentious but also sexy. If Carlos had been there, he’d have told them to get back to work, but he’d have said it in a cool way that wouldn’t make anyone resentful. The staffers obviously felt no urgency to set up our next activity. You could tell that it didn’t even occur to them that we might mind being left waiting. As if time means nothing to people who have nothing but time. I think it’s the opposite. Our time is wasted so profligately that we cherish it for what it might be, not for its emptiness.

I doubted seriously that Jorge was really plotting to escape or to take an unauthorized swim, but he is utter stealth itself when in elope mode. Still, I wanted someone to know that he’d left the building. I went through my available scripts to find a Thomas or Toy Story phrase that I could utter that would function in this situation. For reasons I can’t explain, I am not able to summon a timely, unique message that I can say with my mouth. I can, however, repeat a phrase from an often-viewed video. They call this “echolalia” for what it’s worth. In this particular moment, the best I could come up with was:

“Thomas has left the station.”

I am the echolalic guy who cried wolf too many times, so naturally, no one paid the slightest attention. My mom is the only one capable of translating my echolalic scripts into functional communication. Everyone else assumes my phrases are nonsense. The staffers didn’t even look in my direction, and the other inmates have been trained to be useless. I sat for a moment, but then I lumbered to my feet. It took heavy concentration and motor planning to propel my awkward body in the direction Jorge had gone. My idea was to double the chance that someone would notice a client was missing. I had no personal reason to flee. My top priorities are familiarity and routine, and this action provided neither. But I also didn’t want anything to happen to Jorge.

I went through the door that opened into a corner of the parking lot. The pool was to my right, but it was gated and locked. I couldn’t see Jorge anywhere. The car entrance gate was open for the cars, so I walked in that direction to see if he had gone off the property. I looked up and down the street. I hoped he hadn’t crossed over to the park. I didn’t want to risk my own life dodging traffic. No sight of Jorge. Then I glanced over to the little grassy area tucked away on the other side of the parking lot. There were a couple of play apparatuses there, and it was shady. I walked over there. I could see Jorge’s big feet sticking out of the terra-cotta tunnel. I knew that spot. It’s cool and quiet in there. I had no need to disturb him now that I had found him and knew he was safe. I would just wait for someone to come along. There was a bench next to the basketball hoop. I sat down. I counted cars that passed. There weren’t many.

*

I’ve spent plenty of time with Jorge. I probably understand his predicament better than the people whose job it is to handle him. Jorge and I are both inmates at an insane asylum that passes itself off as a day program for autistic young adults. We have been in and out of each other’s lives since special ed preschool. We graduated from different schools—well, I graduated. He got a certificate of completion. But there is only one place in this city for people like us to go after high school, so here we are. Reunited.

Jorge and I have shared space off and on for nearly twenty years, but we have never had anything that resembles a conversation. That probably seems incredible, but it’s standard for nonspeakers. Jorge has an admirable level of acceptance about his situation. He doesn’t seem consumed by the frustration, anxiety, and anger that tortures many people who lack speech. Some of us are like tightly wound tops. With a flick of a wrist, we can spin and skitter out of control. Not Jorge. He falls into the category of gentle giant. The first thing you notice about him is his immense size. He is tall, but he’s almost as big around as he is up and down. He usually slumps and hangs his head, as if the act of being big ol’ Jorge is a weighty burden. He is the least aggressive inmate—I should say client—in this sad, boring place. He’s too big to move with any conscious belligerence, and he’s too gentle to get riled in the first place. Jorge presents only one behavioral challenge at Upward Bound, which is probably the most cynical name they could have given this dead-end waystation. Jorge is what they call an eloper. If you look away for an instant, Jorge is gone. He moves like a specter when no eyeballs are trained on him. This isn’t a problem most of the time; the adult babysitters keep the doors locked in this place. But when we go on our weekly field trips to Target, a staffer is assigned specifically to Jorge. Thankfully, I don’t require this level of supervision.

People can be elitist when it comes to speech. If you can’t communicate, it must mean that you are mentally retarded. In the special ed room, math consisted of learning how to make change, and English meant picture books. Unlike Jorge, I had a ticket out. My parents refused to accept that I was an idiot. They saw this Indian lady on 60 Minutes who had taught her nonspeaking son to type and they tracked her down. I was three when I met Soma. She showed me how to point and make choices of words and letters. By the time I started school, I could spell and do simple math better than my neurotypical peers. The catch was that I needed an aide beside me to hold up the little laminated board with a QWERTY alphabet and basic punctuation marks on it. The aide needed to be trained to help me stay on task.

Autism on my end of the spectrum is like ADHD times a thousand. It’s nearly impossible for me to untangle the many channels in my brain so that I can stay on a single station. It’s like sitting in front of a bank of monitors that are all showing different events, and all are playing at top volume. The aide uses prompts, repeating the letter or word I’ve just pointed to, to keep me on track so that I can complete a thought. My brain can easily switch to another channel and the communication drifts away unfinished. The aide shakes the letter board when I get derailed to regain my attention. The sustaining of my attention is a dance of subtle cues and prompts. It’s not a dance you learn on the first try. Training can take a while, but it’s crucial. It’s also important that the aide has a core of calm. I pick up on the energy. My focus is obliterated if the person helping me is stressed or lacks confidence. Good soul + good training = good aide. A tall order for a low-paying gig.

The public school had no idea what to do with me. My mom tried to show them, offered to train an aide, just as she had been trained by Soma. School administrators said no. I kept going to school, bored and chagrined in special ed. Mom had to work, but she worked from home as a technical writer. If you have a kid like me, you have to be flexible. Mom spent several hours after school giving me little lessons in math, science, and history. She made the school give her the textbooks that the typical kids worked from. She read to me every day from children’s classics and poetry. She kept me at grade level. I have to confess that my behavior during this period was challenging to say the least. I was not submitting quietly to instruction. The special ed teacher and the school psychologist might presume that I didn’t want to learn. My mom forged ahead anyway. I don’t know which came first: my desire to learn or her passion for me to get a proper education. At any rate, I was finally allowed to sit in the corner of the remedial class, where I worked with my aide one-on-one. It felt like my life had finally begun the day the teacher invited me to join the remedial learners in a group lesson. Thanks to my mom’s sessions at home, I was already ahead of the other students. I didn’t mind. It gave me the bandwidth I needed to work on controlling my autistic behaviors in class.

By high school, I was on diploma track. This constituted a minor miracle. Most of the severely autistic kids I started out with had been quietly shunted off to special schools where they couldn’t bother anyone but each other. Jorge was bused to some place an hour away. None of us were expected to meet graduation requirements. My pointing and typing gave me entrée to a different outcome. I often wondered why the school district didn’t try to replicate what I was doing with the others, like Jorge. I guess it was just too perplexing, or too much work. Or they had no warrior mom to force them into educating the losers they assumed to be ineducable.