Dustjacket copy

Mild-mannered, middle-aged newspaperman Stanley T. Branford is a fastidiously good man who plays by the rules, pays his bills, and lives his life seriously. He worries about his children, about world peace and the environment, about whether he is loving and attentive enough to his wife, and about how they will meet the costs of sending their kids to the good colleges he knows they will deserve to attend.

Then Stanley comes home one afternoon to find his 15-year-old daughter sitting at the family computer with tears streaming down her face, stunned by a relentless slideshow of internet pornography. “How could you do this to me, Daddy? What is all this?” she cries out as she runs from the house.

By the time Stanley’s wife and son get home an hour later, his marriage is all but over. His bank accounts, internet accounts, and credit cards have been hijacked by a faceless but brilliant internet criminal who seems determined to destroy Stanley’s life and fully capable of pulling it off, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Stanley soon discovers that he has been framed in the theft of millions of dollars, and by the next afternoon he is being held awaiting trial in state prison, unable to make bail because in less than 24 hours he has been abandoned by friends, family, and everyone he has ever known – everyone but Amy Tuckerman, a young newspaper protégé of his who still believes in his integrity (in part because he has been so principled in refusing her invitation to take their relationship to another level). Together they begin to hunt down the man who is destroying Stanley’s future, only to find him in Stanley’s past.

Stanley knows that he is locked in a death-struggle for survival, and ultimately his will is stronger than anyone might have predicted as he fights to recover, on every level, his identity. His life is already destroyed, and now his only hope is to embrace his death.