About The Book

On military bases and in broken homes, from the foggy coast to the high desert, this is a story about seeing clearly when survival is the only thing you know. The Cloud Grows Thin is about finding sanctuary in the ruins of broken systems—and learning that grace doesn’t erase what happened, but makes something new out of it.

The Cloud Grows Thin is Michael LaFleur’s account of growing up where America’s systems disappoint and families fail . . . and finding a way to build something different.

A memoir of survival, grit, grace, and building sanctuary from what’s broken.

About the Author

Michael LaFleur learned early that survival meant seeing clearly—not just what families and institutions promise, but what they actually deliver. Forced to survive childhood mostly alone, he discovered that the distance between promise and reality is where real life happens.

He knows what it means to build something stable from nothing, to break cycles that seemed destined to repeat. His perspective comes from the understanding that transformation is possible—but only through grace, unearned but not unopposed.

The Cloud Grows Thin is his first book. He lives with his wife Christina in Virginia’s Blue Ridge foothills, in the sanctuary they built together from the remnants of broken systems.

Grace, unearned but not unopposed