Mehmet battles for daily survival in the murky Istanbul of 1951 while being forced to learn the craft of theft and violence alongside the other street children. Come evening, he curls up under a stinking jetty in a waterway off the Bosporus Strait. Desperation fills him as he yearns to break free from the life inflicted on him by his drunken, womanizing father, little knowing that his rotting body lies at the bottom of those same waters. Adulthood comes before Mehmet finds out that it wasn't fate that had taken control when he was a boy, but a very real nemesis. But is it too late? Can he yet turn things around and get his life back?
Author
Rik Stone’s working life began in shipyards before he moved on to become a merchant seaman and, for reasons he won’t share here, on more than one occasion found himself stranded in the middle of nowhere. Later on, he worked in quarries and met some wonderfully rich and diverse characters. But then life tamed, maybe a little too much, when he moved into the IT industry. A surprise came like an episode from Tales from the Unexpected when he became interested in studying and worked through to gaining a BSc. degree in Mathematics and Computing. But it was his love of reading fiction gave him the ambition to write it and his broad experience of life and the confidence of education enabled him to do it. Rik and his wife share a home in Essex in the UK and they have loved, and continue to love, traveling the world; especially when taking it all in from a ship’s balcony.
