Lord Fear

the long version

"From the author of the widely praised Class A--a memoir that investigates the life and death of his enigmatic stepbrother, who died of a heroin overdose, and compels him to redefine his own place in a family whose narrative is bisected by the tragic loss. Lucas Mann's stepbrother, Josh, died of a heroin overdose when Lucas was only thirteen years old. Charismatic, ambitious, cruel and sadistic, violent and vulnerable, possibly schizophrenic, Josh's brief life was ultimately unknowable. Yet, Josh is both a presence and absence in the author's life that will not remain unclaimed. Told in kaleidoscopic shards of memories assembled from interviews with Josh's friends and family and the raw material of the Josh's own journals, a revealing, startling portrait unfolds. At the same time, Mann pulls back to question and examine his own complicated feelings about and motives for recovering memories of his brother's life, searching for a balance between the tension of the inevitability of Josh's life and the 'what-ifs' that beg to be asked. Unstinting in its honesty and profound in its conclusions, Lord Fear more than confirms the promise of Mann's earlier book; with it, he is poised to enter the ranks of the best young writers of his generation"--