Boxer Hobo, by Johnny T. Noctor:

When self-styled professional boxer and hobo, Johnny Noctor, regains consciousness in hospital the world is never the same for him. Johnny has sustained a fractured skull and serious brain injury and there’s a question on how he got that way. The doctors assume that he must have fallen over while drunk, but Johnny suspects that he’s been viciously assaulted. Frustrated by excuses and bureaucratic resistance, he hits the streets again with the firm intention of finding his assailant himself. Author, Johnny Noctor, knows how to write with a sardonic and often poetic wit: “I’m Noctor, where’s the doctor? … I’m not robo, I’m hobo … Doctor Dunn, are you married to a nun?” But along with the humor, there’s a serious story being told. Intelligent, sharp, wry and reminiscent of Charles Bukowski’s tales from the hard, alcohol-hazed side of life on the fringes of society, Johnny shines a light on so-called friends who only know how to use, take and then discard, along with the ugliness of an apathetic society and corruption in a sport he loves and values, while he struggles against his own demons, works hard to be a positive role model to his children and survives the brutalities of life on the cold, concrete streets where death stalks invisibly in the form of The Nothing, searching for the next easy victim. But Johnny refuses to be a victim, and however hard he got knocked down, he was never out for the count. His resolute, never-say-die attitude has to be admired as he triumphs over adversity when many other men would have crumbled and thrown in the proverbial towel.

Life, especially when complicated by injury and the misery of addiction, can be the hardest fight of all.