Overview

Derek Pedley abandons his 30-year journalism career on the brink of a breakdown, haunted by addiction, compulsion and obsession, and carrying the heavy baggage of a boy who found his adoption papers at 15. When an anguished letter his mother wrote almost half a century earlier arrives five years after her death, it raises more questions than it answers. The man who was born Abraham Maddison embarks on a quest to find the truth, uncovering a story of heartbreak and lies that echoes the pain of tens of thousands of mothers and children, robbed of each other by Australia's Forced Adoption era. It is also a spiritual journey, and Derek must find a way to bridge the visceral disconnection of adoption, reunion, estrangement and death to achieve peace with his mother, Joye Maddison, who was allowed to hold her newborn just once before he was taken away in Perth, in 1972. With his marriage and mental health at stake, and guided by a psychologist and other experts, Derek confronts the worst of himself, and his past, with a blend of journalistic rigour and earthy humour. Crazy Bastard is raw and harrowing, brutally honest, and beautifully vulnerable. It is one man's search for identity, for love, and for the truth.

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9781743059715

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Journalist Abraham Maddison has worked in WA and SA newspapers since 1988, reporting and editing under his adoptive name, Derek Pedley. Under that name, he also published three true crime books, including two shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Crime Awards. He was a News Editor at the Advertiser in Adelaide and edited the paper's state and federal political coverage from 2013-2020. Abraham walked away from journalism in 2020 to complete Crazy Bastard, a memoir of his 1972 forced adoption, which took four years to research and write. He is now a sub editor at the Sunraysia Daily in Mildura. He lives in Adelaide and is married to historian Dr Shannon Schedlich, who co-researched and edited his memoir.

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