From the Front Matter:

"Caveats to Keep in Mind While Reading this Book

If you are expecting a story that includes tight plotting and heroic characters, or a quest for some mysterious manuscript hidden in the caves of Qumran, you will be disappointed. There will be no linguistics professors chasing Templar Knights, nor will there be any accusations of child molesting, drug addiction, alcoholic parents, nor any attempt to run with scissors.

Just a portrait of an uncanny period of misfortune, and examples of some damaged, mean and infuriating people; and of me, trying not to be one of those damaged, mean, and infuriating people.

It's a memoir. Creative nonfiction, maybe. But not fiction. It was and is an attempt to honestly chronicle an overwhelming and almost fatal period in my life, so to gain closure. I am allowing you, the reader, to peek into my innermost thoughts and experiences, and maybe it doesn't matter if you approve or relate. Maybe I just, as always, feel compelled to communicate myself and my life through the pages of the print medium. Because I think we all have a story to tell, and we should all be telling it; it might help someone else along the way.

The individuals who populate the pages of this memoir are portrayed as accurately as my journal entries from that time can accomplish. Yet, some of them will inevitably gesticulate, huff and puff, and deny ever having behaved in such a manner. They will practice some revisionist history, call me a psycho, deride my good character, belittle my progress since that time, and negate my accomplishments.

These people can summarily kiss my ass."