A searing memoir of loss and redemption ("People") that exposes the side of "The Wolf of Wall Street" we didn t get to see ("Metro"), "After Perfect "is a cautionary tale about one family s destruction in the wake of the Wall Street implosion.
Selected as one of the year s Fifteen Books You Need to Read by the "Village Voice," Christina McDowell s unflinching memoir is a tale of the American Dream upended. Growing up in an affluent Washington, DC, suburb, Christina and her sisters were surrounded by the elite: summering on Nantucket Island, speeding down Capitol Hill s rich back roads, flying in their father s private plane. Their life of luxury was brutally stripped away after the FBI arrested Tom Prousalis on fraud charges. When he took a plea deal as he faced the notorious Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort s testifying against him, the cars, homes, jewelry, clothes, and friends that defined the family disappeared before their eyes, including the one thing they could never get back: each other.
Christina writes with candid clarity about the dark years that followed and the devastation her father s crimes wrought upon her family: the debt accumulated under her identity; her mother s breakdown; her own spiral into addiction and promiscuity; and the delusion that enveloped them all. She shines a remarkable, uncomfortable light on a family s disintegration and takes a searing look at a controversial financial time and also at herself, a child whose normal belonged only to the one percent. A rare, insider s perspective on the collateral damage of a fall from grace, "After Perfect "is a poignant reflection on the astounding pace at which a life can change and how blind we can be to the ugly truth."