The Spider Room

Matt Mahoney is stuck in the in-between place: No longer a boy but not yet a man. His life had become a maze of haunting memories and heartbreaking regrets over the loss of a girlfriend, his first true love, and the death of his father. Paralyzed by the fear that his self-destructive tendencies would lead him to commit that one irreversible and permanent act, he took to the road to escape the misery thoughts that had made his existence harrowing and frightful .With only his thumb and backpack, he says goodbye to New Holland, a dying factory town in upstate New York, and embarks on a journey through "the great everywhere" that forces him to question everything he thought he knew about himself and brings him face-to-face with the demons that had driven him away from his home.After a series of epiphanies and encounters with the "perfect strangers" he meets along his journey, Matt is able to examine the mistakes of his past and discover the grace and insight to lead him forward into his uncertain future. His is a journey through sorrow and joy, despair and transcendence, fear and love in his quest to shed the adolescent skin of his troubled past and discover the key to that other inner self, the "New Matt" he aspires to become.