Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A whodunit journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers of hell... back through crimes and misdemeanors, prison and homelessness, suicide attempts, violence, drugs, juvenile halls and special schools-to expose the smiling, gregarious thirteen-year-old boy who was Stuart before his long, sprawling, dangerous fall. A writer's quest to give voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us all: that every life--even the most chaotic and disreputable--is a story worthy of being told. --From publisher description.