Finding Peter: A True Story of the Hand of Providence and Evidence of Life after Death

William Peter Blatty

Mar 2015 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A New York Times Bestseller!

For those who have lost a loved one to that liar and fraud named Death.

So reads the dedication of William Peter Blatty's Finding Peter, a deeply moving memoir that tests the bounds of grief, love, and the soul. Blatty, the bestselling author and Oscar Award–winning screenwriter of The Exorcist, lived a charmed life among the elite stars of Hollywood.

His son Peter, born over a decade after The Exorcist, grew from an apple-cheeked boy into an "imposing young man with a quick, warm smile." But when Peter died very suddenly from a rare disorder, Blatty's world turned upside down.

As he and his wife struggled through their unrelenting grief, a series of strange and supernatural events began occurring—and Blatty became convinced that Peter was sending messages from the afterlife.

A true and unabashedly personal story, Finding Peter will shake the most cynical of readers—and it will remind those in grief that our loved ones do truly live on.

Ratings and reviews

Beautiful book that gives hope for those who suffer from the loss of a loved one. Thank you Bill for sharing your life experience and great love for your family. Thank you for sharing your deep faith that gives us courage to seek God and his promise of everlasting life.

I never review anything. It’s not my trade so I leave it to the experts. For William Peter Blatty I will have to make an exception. I had previously read the Exorcist and Legion so this makes the third book by him I have read. My complaint is they are never long enough. I fear he is the last of the deep thinkers. The book is a funny, entertaining and at sometimes sad look at his life and the hand of providence moving in it. Much like his novels seem to look at the meaning of life and our relationship in the cosmos, this book seems to examine his perception of the cosmos sometimes looking back. I loved seeing how bits and pieces of his life ended up in his stories and some of his stories are comedy gold. I will leave the sad parts of the book for future readers but I do think in the end they will find Peter.

About the author

William Peter Blatty is the bestselling author of The Exorcist, which he turned into an Academy Award–winning screenplay. The son of immigrant parents, he was a comic novelist before embarking on a four decade career as a Hollywood writer, penning the screenplays for A Shot in the Dark, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?, the Julie Andrews romantic comedy Darling Lili, and The Ninth Configuration (which he also directed), among many other films. A graduate of Georgetown University, he lives with his wife, Julie, in Bethesda, Maryland.