Lord Fear: A Memoir

Lucas Mann’s brother, Josh, died of a heroin overdose when Lucas was only thirteen years old. Charismatic, ambitious, cruel,and sadistic, violent and vulnerable, Josh’s brief life was ultimately unknowable. Yet, Josh is both a presence and absence in the author’s life that will not remain unclaimed. Told in kaleidoscopic shards of memories assembled from interviews with Josh’s friends and family and the raw material of the Josh’s own journals, a revealing, startling portrait unfolds. At the same time, Mann pulls back to question and examine his own complicated feelings about and motives for recovering memories of his brother’s life, searching for a balance between the tension of the inevitability of Josh’s life and the what-ifs that beg to be asked. Unstinting in its honesty and profound in its conclusions, Lord Fear more than confirms the promise of Mann’s earlier book; with it, he is poised to enter the ranks of the best young writers of his generation.