In this powerful memoir, the bestselling author of
Big Fish
tries to come to terms with the life and death of his multi-talented longtime friend and brother-in-law, who had been his biggest hero and inspiration, in a poignant, lyrical, and moving memoir.
If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For Daniel Wallace, that was his longtime friend and brother-in-law, William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into one: an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook. William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate, and the person who gave him the courage to become a writer. But when William took his own life at age forty-eight, Daniel’s heartbreak led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that brought him down a path into the tortured recesses of William’s past. Eventually a new picture emerged of a man with too many secrets and too much shame to bear. With his first memoir, bestselling author of Big Fish Daniel Wallace delivers a stunning book that is as innovative and emotionally resonant as his novels. Part love story, part true crime, part desperate search for the self, This Isn’t Going to End Well tells an intimate and moving story of what happens when we realize our heroes are human.