Fool For Life

by Wm. Stage, L. Fraser Manifold (Illustrator)

Wm. Stage gets paid to be a nuisance, and he is good at it. A process server in St. Louis, bearing bad news to strangers -- no wonder people shun him. Apart from this peculiar work, he has his own secret To find his unknown biological family and have cocktails with them. His neurotic mother aids in the search, hoping to bolster her theory that the child she and her husband adopted 50 years ago is indeed a sociopath. Meanwhile, in yet another meandering attempt to center his life, Wm. desperately seeks a woman with a friendly womb. Why is he trying to reproduce like some rutting animal? It takes a series of painful and awakening life-lessons for him to find out. Troubles abound yet Wm. takes it all in stride, stumbling through life like a hod carrier at a tea party. Whether trying to weasel out of a shoplifting charge, chasing after troublesome factory workers, or being held prisoner at Lambert International Airport, he manages to land buttered-side up. But where will it take him?

352 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2008

About the author

Wm. Stage has been a newspaper journalist / columnist and photographer for more than 30 years. Before that, he was a public health officer with the Centers for Disease Control assigned to the St. Louis Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinic. He has taught photojournalism at Saint Louis University School for Professional Studies; and feature writing with the Defense Information School [DINFOS], Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. As of 2025, he has authored 16 books with the most recent, Down And Out In The River City, being his fifth novel. Wm. Stage lives in St. Louis with his wife, Mary, and their many unruly children.