Drew Murk deals drugs in Kingshaw — a suburb the rest of the city has written off. He skims his supplier’s stash, gouges the trust-fund kids in the hills, and tells himself he’s just helping people enjoy their nights. The system’s corrupt anyway. Who is it to judge him?
Then one sloppy Friday night ends in a holding cell, and a magistrate who’s finally run out of patience hands down an ultimatum: complete a year in a strict rehabilitation programme, or spend the next five behind bars.
He has one week to find a placement. Every door slams shut.
But Drew remembers the homeless man who sleeps in the gutter down the road. The one who drinks rainwater and mutters be happy to nobody. The one no one will miss.
It’s the perfect con — take him in, forge the paperwork, collect the payments, walk free.
But the man in the gutter has a name. He has parents in the cemetery two streets over, a head full of aeroplanes, and an unnerving habit of seeing straight through people. And the accountability officer assigned to Drew’s case is far harder to fool than he bargained for.
Drew went looking for a way to save himself.
He had no idea what it was going to cost.
Then One Night Happy Appeared is a raw, blackly funny and devastating novel about the people we step over on the footpath and what it takes to finally watch our own steps.
Johnathon Nicolaou 
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