“Strange how the waves of destiny wash over a man’s soul, leaving ugly cracks and crevices here, polished splendor over there. Strange indeed.”—Scott Pratt, Bestselling Author of the Joe Dillard Series

A lawyer’s fall from grace paved the way for an author’s rise to unimaginable success.

In December of 2005, Scott Pratt was marched to a jail cell after being charged with suborning perjury. Within two years, he had written a legal thriller that was a finalist for the top mystery novel worldwide.

Joe Dillard, Scott’s primary protagonist, served as a whiteboard for the author’s life, enabling him to reimagine and reinvent himself.

Dillard acted as a literary marionette while his puppeteer subjected him to unimaginable adversity. His mother had Alzheimer’s and didn’t recognize him half the time. His sister was an addict who was in and out of jail. The son of the victim tried to kill him—twice. Another client escaped prison and committed murder.

All of this happened in the first novel. Eight more followed.

Scott didn’t spare his main character any more than life had spared him. Dillard wrestled with a rowdy assortment of demons. They stalked him by day and invaded his dreams at night.

Those same demons haunted Scott, creating a vicious tug-of-war between his talent and his volatility. Back and forth his life went from lavish to bankrupt, from a lakeside estate to the cramped quarters of his mother-in-law's basement.

Like Joe Dillard, Scott persevered by leaning into his family's sacred concept of love.

Scott’s precipitous fall has lived on as a cautionary tale for the local legal community in his hometown. One of those lawyers, who worked from the same office Scott once occupied, favors a broader view of his predecessor’s life, hailing his journey as “The great American redemption story.”

Regardless of perspective, Scott was no ordinary Joe.