Adrian Wistreich

Joe Adrian Wistreich

"Well, circumstances change. You turn a corner and the world around you changes. You wake up with your face in the gutter and everything's gone."

Joe feels like a small boy, standing at the side of a road in the desert, lost. He's achieved great things and lost them all. He's loved and lost his child and failed to hold onto the best in his life, and he believes it's all his fault.

His upbringing might be described as deprived and abusive now, but it was 'normal' then. When sent to boarding school at 8, Joe learned how to maintain a stiff upper lip and suppress his emotions. His mother's adage "those who ask don't get, those who don't ask don't want" hung over his troubled childhood.

Joe's abusive and dysfunctional upbringing turned him into a self-destructive and emotionally disconnected adult. Loathing himself and striving to achieve something that deserved his parents' affirmation, Joe wanted to be in control of his destiny and find happiness, but everything he touched seemed to fall apart.

Joe falls from a great height as a successful tycoon to become a homeless alcoholic, arrested while standing on the parapet of Lambeth Bridge. Can he learn to forgive himself and find redemption? Can he rebuild some sort of self-respect and peace by taking one day at a time or will he continue down his dark path to despair?

Joe is a powerful, heart-rending but at times warm and funny story that delves into one man's desperate struggle to find self-compassion and to shake off the belief that he is responsible for what was done to him as a child. His own children are at stake.