Bruce R. Norton Author & Advocate

Writing

Books & long-form work

A book about what love costs, and two more on the way. Two documents about teaching young people the skills to carry it. And a course for parents who want to get it right.

True Love cover

Available now

True Love

It started as a question in a men's group at church: what would happen if someone actually decided to love others the way we are taught to in the Bible? I spent the next twelve years finding out.

True Love is the honest account of that experiment — the hospital rooms and school buses, the courtrooms and broken homes, the places where love stopped being a feeling and started costing something. Alongside the stories runs a second thread: what the research on the brain and on human connection has quietly been confirming all along.

It is a book for anyone who has wondered whether their love makes any difference at all.

And Justice For All cover

A novel based on a true story · Coming soon

And Justice For All

My name is Daniel. Every school morning I stood, faced the flag, and promised my loyalty to a republic “with liberty and justice for all.” I said it so many times that I stopped hearing the last four words.

I heard them again years later, in a courtroom, standing without a lawyer — just me, the record, and the rules I had always been told apply to everyone equally. I took on the entire judicial system, from the state courts all the way to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Evidence. Motions. Hearings. Appeals. More motions. Still pending.

Somewhere along the way I learned how a plain question can be buried under procedure until it simply goes away. Mine was simple enough: were the initials forged? The court never said.

And Justice For All is a novel based on a true story — about the promise we teach our children, and whether it means anything for the people who cannot afford to test it.

Cover of the next book

In progress

Not yet named

I am not ready to say what this one is called.

What I will say is that it is raw and unfiltered, straight from my heart. More when it is ready to be told.

Monograph · Families Renewed, Inc.

LifeBST: A Behavioral Skills Framework

The scholarly foundation for LifeBST, the behavioral skills curriculum framework I am building for Families Renewed. Finished, it will span kindergarten through twelfth grade, with college-level coursework alongside it.

The premise is simple and, as far as I can tell, under-argued: the skills a person learns at twelve are the ones they reach for at thirty and at sixty. LifeBST treats behavioral education as a lifespan investment rather than an adolescent intervention.

Implementation manual

A Framework for Behavioral Education

The companion volume to the monograph: how LifeBST is actually implemented in public schools, private schools, and homeschool settings, written for the five audiences who have to make it work.

Parenting course · three parts

Leading With Love

A parenting course for people who want to do better than what was handed to them. Plain language, no assumed background, and built in three parts, because mothers and fathers are not handed the same job.

Courageous Fatherhood is complete — eight facilitated sessions on anger, adolescence, attachment, and repair. Graceful Motherhood is in development. Parenting Together follows, teaching couples to parent as one rather than two.