Praise for After Perfect
In 2018, After Perfect was optioned by Valparaiso Pictures and is currently being adapted for the screen by writer/director, Elizabeth Chomko.
"An irresistible story about love, greed, and delusion, and how the truth-- after it knocks you down-- really can set you free." - Kim Hubbard, Editor-at-Large, People Magazine
*A People "Twelve Best Summer Beach Books" Pick * A Village Voice "Fifteen Books You Need to Read in 2015" Pick * An O, The Oprah Magazine "Season's Best Biography and Memoir" Pick * A More "Great Reads for B&B, Boat and Beyond!" Pick * A PopSugar "Best of June" Pick*
"A searing memoir of loss and redemption." -People
"In her gritty, heart-wrenching memoir, After Perfect, [Christina McDowell] describes her long journey through depression, addiction, grief, and anger as she reeled from her father's unimaginable betrayal- and how she ultimately found forgiveness." - Parade.com
"Beautifully written, impossible to put down, and searingly honest..." - Laurie Sandell, author of The Imposter's Daughter
"[Christina McDowell] has written a memoir about the fallout from her father's crimes, a tale of the American Dream upended." -The Village Voice
"Without sensationalizing her lifestyle...McDowell faces her past with an admirably rigorous level of criticism and self-awareness." - Shelf Awareness
"With insight and vulnerability, McDowell... illustrates how a downward spiral can, in brave hands, be a prelude to a hopeful reinvention." - J, Ryan Stradel, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest
Growing up in an affluent Washington, DC, suburb, Christina and her sisters were surrounded by the elite: summering on Nantucket Island, speeding down Capitol Hill’s rich back roads, flying in their father’s private plane. Their life of luxury was brutally stripped away after the FBI arrested Tom Prousalis on fraud charges. When he took a plea deal as he faced the notorious Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort’s testifying against him, the cars, homes, jewelry, clothes, and friends that defined the family disappeared before their eyes, including the one thing they could never get back: each other.
Christina writes with candid clarity about the dark years that followed and the devastation her father’s crimes wrought upon her family: the debt accumulated under her identity; her mother’s breakdown; her own spiral into addiction and the delusion that enveloped them all. She shines a remarkable, uncomfortable light on a family’s disintegration and takes a searing look at a controversial financial time and also at herself, a child whose “normal” belonged only to the one percent. A rare, insider’s perspective on the collateral damage of a fall from grace, After Perfect is a poignant reflection on the astounding pace at which a life can change and how blind we can be to the ugly truth.