Next Stop: An Autistic Son Grows Up

The summer David Finland was twenty-one years old, he and his mother, Glen, navigated the Washington, D.C., Metro trains. Every day. David has autism, and the hope was that if he could learn the train lines, maybe he could get a job. And if he could get a job, then maybe he could move out on his own. And maybe his parents’ marriage could get the jump start it so desperately needed. Maybe.

A candid portrait of a differently abled young man poised at the entry to adulthood, Next Stop recounts the complex relationship between a child with autism and his family as he steps out into the real world alone for the first time. This personal narrative of a mother’s perpetually tested hope is a universal story of how our children grow up and how we learn to let go and reclaim our lives, no matter how hard that may be.