When a heartbroken and miserable boy is confronted by a loathsome visitor at his dinner table, he is forced to consider some of Life's most slippery questions: How do we tell the difference between the sacred and the abhorrent? How can we be at peace in the face of a shattered heart, a bruised childhood, a numbing medical diagnosis, and other challenging circumstances? What decides how we experience our life?

Here, Matthew Maxwell offers us the possibility of ultimate freedom - that our entire human experience is determined not by the "facts" of the stories we tell ourselves, but by the meaning we choose to make of those stories. It's a truth both astounding and powerful in its simplicity, and Maxwell skillfully builds a window through which readers of all ages can observe its emergence as they watch his protagonist's seemingly pitiful day unfold.

How to Hold a Cockroach is Maxwell's delightful and moving love letter to humankind. A quick, compelling read, it is indeed a book for those who are free and don't know it. . . yet.