The Miranda

Out of work psychologist Joe Johnson has a plan: one that will take a thousand days, cover twenty-five thousand miles, and never go beyond the backyard of his new home. Joe is going to walk around the world, or at least the same distance as the Earth's circumference. As he begins circling the small path--twenty-five miles a day--Joe ruminates on everything from his recent divorce and career struggles, to Greek philosophers and the Bataan Death March. Meanwhile Joe makes friends, and a few enemies, of his surrounding neighbors who vary from the earnestly nosy to the outwardly hostile. What's the point of Joe's eccentric project? Joe himself may not be sure, though the impetus might just be Joe's aforementioned career, a job which had become increasingly untenable, and led to trouble in his marriage. It wasn't that he hadn't been good at his job, but the work - -training- operatives before they enter war zones - had not been necessarily a healthy career path, even for a psychologist. Indeed, he was only preparing his subjects for the worst. Of course, Joe doesn't tell any of his new friends about his old job, though his particular skillset comes in handy when he decided to finally deal with the out-of-control neighbors terrorizing the block. No one can tell what Joe is really thinking--clever and resourceful, both a know-it-all and a humble eccentric, Joe suspects that humor really can be the best way to heal. But Joe's past is catching up to him, and he knows even a thousand days could be a stretch. Funny, irreverent, and finally shocking, Geoff Nicholson's novel is a profound meditation on the extreme's of what human beings can tolerate.