A devastated child learned on Christmas Eve that there is no Santa Claus. But Christmas morning brought a new form of magic: the Sneaky Pete Magic Set. This is the story of how life unfolded for that child, whose love of magic was rivaled only by his love of Jesus, and, later, the Bible. It is a story of hilarious faux-pas, miraculous escapes, intense introspection, addiction, struggle with a narrow Evangelicalism, and side trips into influential thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard, Ernest Becker, Karl Barth, and Jacques Ellul. It is, ultimately, a story of transformation: but a transformation accomplished only by surrender, and the death of many "borrowed selves" in order to arrive at a true beginning.