Heartland

From the creator of Luther: Told with absolute veracity and unsparing candor, Heartland is the memoir of an isolated little boy and the brutish stepfather he couldn't help but love When Neil Cross was born, his mother suffered from severe postpartum depression and later admitted to trying to kill herself and her baby son. Then, when he was five, she "went out and didn't come back," leaving behind her children and their heartbroken father. Two years later she returns and gains custody of Neil, taking him to live with her new partner, Derek Cross, who showers him with attention and love in a way that Neil has never known. Derek teaches him about music and books; he is patient but firm, and more reliable than Neil's mother. But as Neil grows older he realizes his stepfather is more complicated than he seems. For all his love, Derek is a manipulator, an adulterer, a racist, and a con man. And he is the father whom Neil now loves. With devastating honesty, Neil Cross explores the circumstances of this love-one of pleasant rewards but consequences too dire to predict. "The most disturbingly vivid fast-track into childhood's unexpressed hugeness, that I have come across . . . Fiction cannot compete with this." -The Age (Melbourne) "Moving and engrossing . . . Heartland is a tour de force." -Daily Mail "Cross has given his own life story the shapeliness and ironic depth of fiction." -The Sunday Times "A wonderful memoir . . . a great example of how to wrest real life into a work of art." -The Guardian "Straight from the heart. Quite simply it cannot be faulted." -The Big Issue "The way Cross puts the authorial boot in, tears shining in his eyes, is riveting." -The Independent Neil Cross (b. 1969) is a British novelist and screenwriter best known as the creator of the multiple-award-winning international hit BBC crime series Luther, starring Idris Elba, and the international hit horror movie Mama. His highly acclaimed memoir, Heartland, was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2006. Cross has also written several thrillers, including Captured, Holloway Falls, and Always the Sun, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Cross continues to write for TV and film in the United Kingdom and the United States. He lives with his wife and two sons in Wellington, New Zealand.