This book is both an autobiography, in which Gary describes a very eventful life, and an exploration into meaning. After a deprived childhood in a poor part of Melbourne Gary enjoyed some larrikin teenage adventures before his strong ambition to succeed through study and sport led him into a more conventional ways. He describes his early working life as a struggle to maintain a difficult marriage whilst developing a successful business career. A series of tragic events involving his wider family provided a continuously stressful background to Gary's battle to reconcile the career of a senior accountant and family responsibilities with his concerns about an ethical way of living. The reader is confronted by a series of violent events in Gary's life and cannot help asking him or herself how they would deal with their brother being murdered, their mum suiciding and their sister self-mutilating and dying a slow, painful death.