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The man in the headlines was once the boy next door.
2013. Joe is arrested and charged with felony sex offenses. Cherie, who grew up in his neighborhood, is in graduate school and on the path to a promising career.
They shared a street, a mutual adolescent crush, and loving, if imperfect, homes. They also each lived through a life-changing trauma that no one around them recognized.
ANY JOE is a literary psychological drama about how two ordinary young people are shaped, and wounded, by the world around them. It is set in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, an era flooded with sexual explicitness, early internet chat rooms, and morally ambiguous messages. It follows Joe and Cherie from adolescence into adulthood, where vulnerability meets corruption and cruelty, and the road from victim to offender is shorter than we like to believe.
When Joe and Cherie reconnect as adults, the past comes with them. Can a love built on old wounds survive who they have become? And is everything forgivable once you know the story?
Perfect for readers of character-driven literary fiction, psychological drama, coming-of-age stories, and book-club novels that ask hard moral questions.
What readers are saying
★★★★★ “Magnificent!” – Viga Boland, Readers' Favorite
★★★★★ “A powerful work of drama.” – K.C. Finn, Readers' Favorite
★★★★★ “A story that needs to be shared.” – Jamie Michele
★★★★★ “Well-plotted and cleverly accomplished.” – Christian Sia, Readers' Favorite
Content note: includes non-graphic depictions of childhood trauma, abuse, and sexual offense
Joe and Cherie grew up in the same neighborhood, shared a mutual adolescent crush, and came from loving, if imperfect homes. As adolescents, both experienced life-changing trauma.
ANY JOE is the story of two young people negotiating the influences of their environment, and family and peer relationships, amidst societal and cultural change in the mid 1990's and early 2000's, where the dawn of the internet provoked sexual explicitness and morally ambiguous messages. These phenomena complicate Joe and Cherie's lives by playing on their individual vulnerabilities, especially in the face of corruption and cruelty.
Once Joe and Cherie reconnect as adults, their past experiences and human frailties come back into play, rendering untenable prospects for their future.
