Stuart Hotchkiss is at the end of his rope. Underemployment, bankruptcy, and a looming third divorce have worn him down. His mother has died. He’s estranged from his own son. Death seems like a release. The son of a once significant Southern family, Hotchkiss spent his early life struggling to escape familial expectations and secrets. He paid for his own education and eventually secured a position as president of a national media conglomerate, only to resign a year later and bring senseless litigation that rendered him permanently underemployed. “Southern Fried Fiction” is all that a memoir should be—a captivating story, real and raw, with a healthy dose of humor to carry readers through the pain of its author’s loss and past mistakes. Through it, Hotchkiss eloquently exorcises the demons of his climb toward success, capping it off with a spark of hope beyond the veil of his near suicide, one that even the most cynical of us can find inspiration in. In the vein of Russell Baker’s “Growing Up” and Michael Gates Gill’s “How Starbucks Saved My Life,” Hotchkiss’s memoir is a moving account of one man’s battle to overcome his demons and start over.