The Heart of It All

John Ritter a frustrated artist demonstrates that self-destruction can be a form of protest—or maybe just the last resort for those who refuse to grow up. After years of adventure on the West Coast he returns to Cincinnati to care for his grandmother who suffers from Alzheimers and to protect her farmland from commercial development. Still in love with his ex-girlfriend and his youthful ideals he lives in denial of the facts that she has moved on that he is ill-equipped to serve as a caretaker and that his life is in limbo. Unreliable unstable but hilarious and brutally honest Johns artistic sensibility and his job as a landscaper make his situation even more maddening. Wearing his wounded heart on his sleeve he turns his life into a piece of performance art that involves late-night graffiti raids and car theft. He aims to illustrate how the forces of love freedom and individuality can triumph over greed conformity and corporatization. In the eyes of those around him his project is a failure but for the reader it offers a dangerously veering joy ride.