This Isn't Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew

“A memoir wrapped in an elegy… [that] maps a strangely stunning life… [Wallace] imbues this chronicle with tremendous compassion — for William, for everyone.

This Isn’t Going to End Well gives off the particular radiance of a life lived hard, whatever else: as such, a brand of American bildungsroman.

There’s deep satisfaction to its arc, despite its inherent sadness — a wondrous glimpse of the melding, in human doings, of fate, character and serendipity.”―Washington Post “Daniel Wallace has, once again, shown himself to be an exquisite storyteller.

Like bourbon, this book goes down hot and strong but finishes with a salving sweetness which can only be called a blessing.

A love story and a ghost story a once, This Isn’t Going to End Well straddles the line between present and past, truth and beauty.”―Tayari Jones, author of An American MarriageA profoundly moving, large-hearted, genre-bending memoir from the bestselling author of Big Fish.

If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own.

For Daniel Wallace, that was his longtime friend and brother-in-law, William Nealy.

Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into one: an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook.

William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate, and the person who gave him the courage to become a writer.

But when William took his own life at age forty-eight, Daniel’s heartbreak led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that took him down a path into the tortured recesses of William’s past.