Destined to be one of the most talked about books of 2003: a brilliant first novel by the world's most famous wrestler In the world of WWF wrestling, Mick Foley is a legend. The author of two best-selling autobiographies, he has now written his first novel, a book of such brilliance that it will astonish the critics while delighting his millions of fans. Antietam (Andy) Brown - named for the great-great-grandfather who died on that Civil War battleground - was an overgrown ten-year-old when he killed his abusive foster father and the teenager who tried to rape him. Now, after seven years in reform school, he is presumably free to make a new start as a student at Conestoga High School. But he is immediately thrust into the violent and debased life of his real father (known as Tietam) - an oddly charismatic man who seems addicted to bodybuilding, beer-swilling and 'bareback riding', his words for his serial womanizing.
Swimming through a morass of crudity and violence (he's made an enemy of the football coach and his pack of steroid-pumped teens), Andy is stunned to find himself pursued by the high school homecoming queen - a born-again Christian - and to discover that his father has a hidden cache of books on serious, even esoteric, subjects and a hidden past. Obsessed with the idea of offering his girlfriend a pure love and driven to find out whether he's descended from a monster or a hero, Andy searches for the truth in the dangerous currents of his father's past and present - in a novel that is a zany and deeply moving celebration of the human spirit.
- ISBN10 0224069691
- ISBN13 9780224069694
- Publish Date 3 July 2003
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 10 August 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English