Idiot Wind (eBook)

Peter Kaldheim graduated in English and Classics from Dartmouth, before going on to work in publishing (as head copy editor at Harcourt then acquiring editor at Van Nostrand Reinhold), but an addiction to drugs caused his life to come apart, landing him in Rikers Island jail after he sold cocaine to an undercover drug squad agent. He now lives in Lindenhurst, Long Island, where he fishes for fluke on charter boats out of Montauk. Idiot Wind is his first book.

The smart, easygoing voice, personal honesty, and downright humility I found in Peter Kaldheim's memoir, Idiot Wind, grabbed me from the very first page, and I ended up never wanting it to end

Idiot Wind is an utterly compelling memoir - the story of a life squandered and ultimately reclaimed. For all his self-confessed debauchery, Kaldheim is an acute observer and a great storyteller: the chapters on his nights as a homeless coke dealer in downtown Manhattan in the eighties are harrowing and hilarious. And his descriptions of his subsequent hobo peregrinations are rich in gritty detail. Kaldheim channels Orwell, Kerouac and Frederick Exley as he stumbles across America and finally finds his unlikely way to redemption

Idiot Wind gives the definitive, harrowing, and often grimly hilarious answer to the question of what happens to a person when he "drops off the map", his old life no longer viable and his new life nowhere in sight