Daniel Wallace

“A memoir wrapped in an elegy… [that] maps a strangely stunning life… [Wallace] imbues this chronicle with tremendous compassion — for William, for everyone.  This Isn’t Going to End Well  gives off the particular radiance of a life lived hard, whatever as such, a brand of American bildungsroman. There’s deep satisfaction to its arc, despite its inherent sadness — a wondrous glimpse of the melding, in human doings, of fate, character and serendipity.”― Washington Post “Daniel Wallace has, once again, shown himself to be an exquisite storyteller.  Like bourbon, this book goes down hot and strong but finishes with a salving sweetness which can only be called a blessing.  A love story and a ghost story a once,  This Isn’t Going to End Well  straddles the line between present and past, truth and beauty.”―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage A profoundly moving, large-hearted, genre-bending memoir from the bestselling author of Big Fish . If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For Daniel Wallace, that was his longtime friend and brother-in-law, William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook. William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate, and the person who gave him the courage to become a writer. But when William took his own life at age forty eight, Daniel’s heartbreak led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that took him down a path into the tortured recesses of William’s past. Eventually a new picture emerged of a man with too many secrets and too much shame to bear. With his first memoir, acclaimed writer Daniel Wallace delivers a stunning book that is as innovative and emotionally resonant as his novels. Part love story, part true crime, part a desperate search for the self, This Isn’t Going to End Well tells an intimate and moving story of what happens when we realize our heroes are human.  

"On one of our last car trips, near the end of my father's life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree ... Suddenly he took a deep breath and said, 'This reminds me...' " In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. Animals loved him, people loved him, women loved him. He knew more jokes than any man alive. At least that’s what he told his son, William. But now Edward Bloom is dying, and William wants desperately to know the truth about his elusive father — this indefatigable teller of tall tales — before it’s too late. So, using the few facts he knows, William re-creates Edward’s life in a series of legends and myths, through which he begins to understand his father’s great feats, and his great failings. The result is hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous. Big Fish is the story of this man's life, told from father to son, some fact, some fiction. But the result is a powerful and transformative act of storytelling, and one way to make amends with the bridge between life and death.