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.