“How could the very thing that felt like my salvation be the exact thing that signaled my mother’s ruin?”

In Bad Catholic, Joe Thomas strips away the secrets of a life defined by an unwanted adoption by a predatory stepfather and a mother who retreated into an alcoholic haze to deny the undeniable. It is the raw account of a boy forced to balance the innocence of childhood and the pressures of being a teenager with the “house of horrors” he returned to every night.

Fiercely honest and unflinching, this memoir marks the shift from a life defined by family secrets to a man defining himself by his own truth. It is a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the courage it takes to finally stop waiting for a rescue and decide, once and for all, it’s time to save myself.