Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith - Softcover

Eszterhas, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312587589 ISBN 13: 9780312587581

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009

Synopsis

Joe Eszterhas knew a lot about darkness. Growing up in refugee camps and then in America's back alleys, he used this knowledge, first as a journalist, and then as a wildly successful screenwriter of sexually graphic and violent films like Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Jade.

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 moving, and sometimes funny, story of a man who turned his back on the wild world he'd immersed himself in for far too long to embrace a new life full of faith, family and love. During his journey, Eszterhas discovers God in the most surprising places: a family game of baseball, a child's photograph of a cloud, a dying mother's dying roses. Through it all, he remains thoroughly himself―wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt as he carried the cross down the church aisle―but becomes a better version of himself than he'd been before.

About this title

About the Author:

Joe Eszterhas has written the screenplays for sixteen films that have made more than a billion dollars at the box office. Among them are Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Flashdance and Showgirls. A former senior editor at Rolling Stone, he is the author of five previous books―the second, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, was nominated for the National Book Award. The father of seven children, he lives with his wife, Naomi, and their four sons in Bainbridge Township, Ohio.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

“I didn’t even really know how to pray...Part of it was that I felt myself to be presuming God’s favor in our new relationship. I thought to myself: Yeah, right, I reject Him so long ago, and then, after forty years of not just ignoring Him but of trashing Him in my writings, I’m suddenly back and talking to Hi as though nothing had interrupted our relationship, saying ‘How ya doin’, God? Haven’t seen you in a while—what up? Everything cool?...’

And now here I was trying to speak to the God whom I had marginalized and mocked and lampooned. How do you approach someone to whom you’ve done that? I didn’t know what to say, so one of the first things I said was ‘I’m sorry. I’ve acted like a colossal A-hole. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but please try to forgive me.’”

—from Crossbearer

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0312587589
• ISBN 13: 9780312587581
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256