Manic Dawn: The Strange Adventures of a Mad Father and a Loyal Son

This is the story of a good dad with a bad problem. Jerry Kahler was an international educator who raised a family in five countries and once played bridge with John Wayne. But he suffered from a rare type of bipolar disorder that caused extreme manic episodes lasting months, and this got him into every kind of trouble imaginable.

Jerry was arrested perhaps 20 times and served seven years in prison in the United States and Costa Rica. Yet he was the uncommonest of criminals, usually charged with offenses like disturbing the peace, fleeing the police or resisting arrest.

When two armed police officers tried to handcuff Jerry at his home in Little Rock, he subdued both of them using a headlock and a leglock, prompting an "Officers down!" call to which 17 policemen responded. When confined to a rubber room in northwest Arkansas, Jerry set it on fire, prompting the evacuation of an entire psychiatric ward. When told by one examiner that he couldn't smoke in the office because there was no ashtray, Jerry offered to eat his own ashes.
 

Jerry's son, author and journalist Karl Kahler, has written a madcap memoir of his father's shocking and sometimes hilarious misadventures. A fascinating exploration of the manic condition, this compulsively readable true story is a harrowing descent into madness, and a son's uncommonly intimate portrait of a troubled father.