How a lonely child deprived of his own father came to fall in love with a monster...
When he was five, Neil's mother walked out of the family home. Two years later she returned with a new man; Derek Cross. His new stepfather prided himself on being an exemplary parent, kind, patient, never too tired to read him stories. Neil loved him. Yet underneath lurked another Derek Cross - a monster: conman, adulterer, liar, racist and a cold-hearted manipulator.
This is a story of a tortured and lonely childhood, of how a young boy, deprived of his birth father, came to love a stepfather who eventually betrayed his trust. By turns brutal, uncompromising, funny and deeply humane, Cross' novelist's eye renders this memoir a true reflection of young Neil's life - something wholly different from the norm.
