In his first full-lenght novel, author Erik Austin explores the desperation and depravity required to stay alive after he downloads a dating app and his american-dream-life becomes a nightmare.  Erik  finds himself in a modern day Dickinson tale, where a group of homeless con-artists steal from the rich and deliver to a devilish “Fagin” in return for drugs and shelter.

 

A raw and twisting page-turning memoir reads like fiction. Stripped spans how  Erik’s existence drastically changed after escaping a rehab, ending up homeless, eating food out of dumpsters, and strung out in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles ultimately thrown into the other side of what had happened to him, learning the hard way that some demons cannot be outrun.   

 

With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Austin takes you inside the underworld to the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. He is a born storyteller who has lived an incredible story, from blackmail to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer. His telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit after learning the secrets of what was really happening.  Candid, shocking, and unforgettable, Stripped is a book about surviving one's own wreckage. It's harrowing, sometimes hilarious, and surprisingly hope-filled.