Tom Cruise has hinted that the three years he spent living in Ottawa weren't happy ones. And if there is any truth to a new unauthorized biography on the 45-year-old superstar out this week, it's no wonder.

Andrew Morton's much-publicized Tom Cruise hit bookstores Tuesday, around the same time as two videos, featuring Cruise in what appears to be promotional material for the Church of Scientology, caused a major stir on the web.

In the book, which the Cruise camp has denounced, Morton reports the then-Tom Mapother was forced to flee an abusive and hard-drinking father in the middle of the night.

As Morton reports in the early pages, it was in Ottawa that Mary Lee Mapother told a young Tom and her three daughters to pack their suitcases and keep them by their beds.

"At four-thirty one spring morning in 1974, when for some reason her husband was out of the house, Mary Lee roused her children, packed them into their station wagon, and headed for the border," writes Morton.

Morton reports the truncated clan, who didn't get to say goodbye to their school friends, drove 800 miles to Louisville, Kentucky, singing along to the radio to keep their spirits up.

Morton writes Cruise would later say of the experience: "We felt like fugitives."

The book indicates the family arrived in Ottawa in 1971, when Cruise was eight. Though he made friends with both boys and, as is demonstrated repeatedly, girls, and excelled in acting and sports here, Morton reports Cruise had a hard time in school and a harder time at home.

Cruise had special sessions during his time in grades four and five at Robert Hopkins Public School to help him overcome dyslexia.

He didn't back down from schoolyard taunts, earning him the respect of some of his classmates. But in the book, his friend Glen Gobel recalls Cruise as also having a belligerent side, years before he would shock everyone by taking on Today Show host Matt Lauer.

The book says one time Cruise, who used to change outfits at lunch to impress his female classmates, got into a fight because he refused to admit to having a new haircut.

His "my way or the highway attitude did lose him friends," recalls Gobel.

Still, according to childhood friend Scott Lawrie, he was someone others just wanted to be around.

"As a kid he was famous even before he became properly famous, if that makes sense," says Lawrie in the book.

According to Morton, things couldn't have been easy for any of the Mapother children.

Though they had headed to Ottawa so Cruise's father could work for the Canadian military, writes Morton, reports from neighbours of their Beacon Hill home indicate his father would later quit and the family would struggle financially.

A neighbour, Irene Lawrie, recalls the Mapother children asking for help in baking a cake for their mother's birthday, saying their oven wasn't working and they didn't have any baking equipment.

Meanwhile, Cruise acted out and skipped school while his home life deteriorated. Morton has Cruise recounting an angry, hard-headed father he seems not to have forgiven.

Morton recounts one story, where Cruise and his dad took a trip into Gatineau. Cruise was hungry, but his dad wouldn't stop and get him something to eat.

"Perversely, he told Tom to eat imaginary food, the duo spending a long time making and then eating a make-believe sandwich, complete with soda and chips," writes Morton.

Morton reports the elder Mapother had become an angry man. Though at one point he sought counselling for his problems, Morton says he also quit jobs and denounced both organized religion and conventional medicine.

He has Cruise saying, "He was a very complex individual and created a lot of chaos for the family."

Later he has Cruise describing his father "as the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. He was an antisocial personality, inconsistent, unpredictable."

Cruise moved over to Henry Munro Middle School for Grade 6 before his abrupt departure from Ottawa in 1974.