Crossbearer

Joe Eszterhas grew up in refugee camps and then in America's back alleys. He worked as a police reporter, racing the cops to robberies and shootings. He interviewed and wrote about mass murders and serial killers. He wrote dark, sexually graphic, and violent films like Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Jade. Eszterhas knew a lot about darkness. Then, on a hellishly hot day in 2001, desperately battling to survive throat cancer and his addictions to alcohol and cigarettes, Joe Eszterhas found God. Or God found him. And he came from darkness into light. Crossbearer is the powerful, poignant, and sometimes wryly humorous account of a streetwise and cynical man's newfound faith, and of how he discovers God in the most intimate and routine moments of life: a family game of baseball, a child's photograph of a cloud, a dying mother's dying roses. It is also the inspiring story of a man who must overcome his addictions to stay alive—and can't by himself. He realizes that he needs the love of his wife, his children, and especially his new friend, God, to do it. Eszterhas is a master memoirist—his Hollywood Animal was called "powerful and affecting" ( The New York Times), "absolutely first-rate" ( Los Angeles Times Book Review) and "heartbreaking, funny and outrageous" ( Houston Chronicle)—and with Crossbearer he reveals a fresh and completely unexpected new chapter of his life. With surprising tenderness and a willingness to bare even weaknesses and mistakes, Joe Eszterhas has written a startling personal story about faith, values, family and love.