Tomás Stepánek was born in a place and at a time that his autism would brand him for life. But he was given the savant gift of vision and the artistic ability to passionately express it on canvas. His life was filled with soaring heights and abysmal lows until he met a woman who showed him how to unlock his heart in ways that he’d never dared dream of. A story of all-consuming obsession and addiction, love eternal and madness. It’s the story of four of his most impassioned works including his one masterpiece which carries, to this day, a deadly curse.
Author Bob Pierce has crafted a most deeply human story, following the life of artist Tomás Stepánek from growing up in the Jewish ghetto of Josefov in Prague at the end of the nineteenth century, through his meteoric rise to fame and his crash into self-destructive depths. The artist struggled within himself, unable to perceive the world or express his own emotions as others would, the author brings out every excruciating element of his life of autism at a time, and in a culture, that could never understand or accept him.
