Any Joe

They knew each other growing up and they're full-fledged adults in 2013, but their lives are aimed in vastly different directions. Joe is arrested and charged with felony sex offenses, while Cherie is in graduate school, on the path to a promising career. Joe and Cherie grew up in the same neighborhood, shared a mutual adolescent crush, and came from loving, if imperfect homes. As adolescents, both experienced life-changing trauma.

This is the story of how two young people negotiate the influences of their environment, and family and peer relationships, amidst societal and cultural change in the mid 1990's and early 2000's, a time flooded with sexual explicitness and morally ambiguous messages. These phenomena complicate Joe and Cherie's lives by playing on their individual vulnerabilities, especially in the face of corruption and cruelty. Once Joe and Cherie reconnect as adults, their past experiences and human frailties come back into play, rendering untenable prospects for their future.

Maura Lin is a psychiatric nurse, by profession, but a writer at heart. Her own experiences and her many years working with patients and families have informed much of her writing. The bulk of her writing - published and personal - has been based on professional experiences and insights. She has written primarily about contemporary life, focusing on ordinary human beings and their fascinating and bewildering struggles to find peace for themselves in a paradoxical world - one filled with opportunities - both life-affirming and destructive.