Born to a mother doing time in prison, and fathered by a man who was murdered two months before he was born, the baby became a ward of the state of Ohio. He remained in the child welfare system until he was 18 years old.

Living in a foster home until he was a teenager, “Fish” (as his friends liked to call him) often cried himself to sleep. When he became an adult, he had no photographs of himself as a child except for one grainy picture. One can barely discern the features of this young boy who, despite staggering odds against him, grew up to be a successful Hollywood screenwriter.