At its heart, The Journey is an exploration of the struggle of being human.

In his powerful poetry, Patrick Jean Charles takes an unflinching look at the minefield of emotional, psychological, and spiritual challenges that are the hallmarks of a young adult's reality. Poems in this rich collection tackle failure, and its inevitability as the punctuation to a person's search for themselves, and the way past experiences shape who each of us are.

Learning from past mistakes is essential to becoming a better person, the author concludes, and the raw, revealing nature of these poems captures that ascendant journey sharply....