Pre-Order Now: Shooting Up by Jonathan Tepper
A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction. "The most riveting memoir I’ve ever read."
“Powerfully moving...an extraordinary memoir.”
— George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America and ABC Sunday News
In the shadows of Madrid’s most notorious drug slum, an American missionary family plants roots among heroin addicts and builds an unlikely church. Shooting Up is Jonathan Tepper’s searing memoir of a childhood spent in San Blas, where syringes littered playgrounds and his closest friends were recovering junkies twice his age.
When Elliott and Mary Tepper arrive in 1985 with their four young sons, San Blas is ground zero of Europe’s heroin epidemic. While other children play soccer, Jonathan befriends bank robbers and former prostitutes. His heroes aren’t athletes but men like Raúl and Jambri, charismatic ex-addicts who transform their lives through the revolutionary drug rehabilitation center the Teppers help found.
What begins as eight men in an apartment becomes Betel, now one of the world’s largest drug rehabilitation networks. But this isn’t a story of institutional triumph. It’s an intimate portrait of radical compassion amid the AIDS crisis, told through the eyes of a boy watching his parents choose the damned over the respectable, witnessing miracles and tragedies in equal measure.
Tepper writes with unflinching honesty about the magnetic pull of the streets, the seductive danger of heroin, and the complicated love between broken people healing together. His prose—elegant yet raw—captures both the squalor of addiction and the stubborn persistence of grace.
This is a memoir about choosing to see beauty in ruins, finding family among outcasts, and learning that the answer to suffering is always more love. It is a story of love and loss, but it is also a love letter to friends, family, and even learning. Part Angela’s Ashes, part The Cross and the Switchblade, Shooting Up announces Tepper as a powerful new voice in memoir, one who transforms a harrowing childhood into an unforgettable testament to hope.
Pre-order Shooting Up today to receive EARLY ACCESS to the audiobook & eBook (delivered by late January).
Choose Your Bundle
Buy Shooting Up in the format that suits you best:
Hardcover + Digital (hardcover ships by February 17, 2026; digital delivered by late January);
Digital-Only (eBook + Audiobook, delivered by late January); or
The Signed First-Edition Bundle includes:
Signed First-Edition Hardcover of Shooting Up (ships by February 17, 2026)
Exclusive moderated Q&A with the author (recording included)
Early Access to the Audiobook + E-book (delivered by late January)
Infinite Books Bookmark
For every Signed First-Edition Bundle purchased, one copy of Shooting Up will be donated to a partner organization serving individuals and communities impacted by addiction and HIV/AIDS. Donation partners and distribution are selected and coordinated directly by our team to ensure books reach appropriate programs.
About Jonathan
Jonathan Tepper is the author of several acclaimed financial books, including The Myth of Capitalism. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned degrees in History and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MLitt from the University of Oxford. Born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico as a young child, Jonathan came of age in Madrid’s San Blas neighborhood, where his parents ran one of the country’s first drug rehabilitation centers. Shooting Up is his first memoir, offering a deeply personal view of life at the intersection of faith, addiction, and resilience. He and his wife Stacey have a two-year-old who is a human hurricane of curiosity and keeps them busy. Jonathan returns to Madrid as often as he can.
Early Praise for Shooting Up
Shooting Up is an extraordinary memoir of a unique childhood among heroin addicts during the AIDS epidemic, but it is a universal story of love and loss that is powerfully moving. At a time when society is so deeply divided—and faith is a wedge that is often used—it is refreshing to read a missionary kid’s true story of compassion and empathy for the outcasts. The book is also a tale filled with grace and humor in life’s darkest moments.
— George Stephanopoulos, political commentator and Good Morning America and ABC Sunday News anchor
Shooting Up is an astonishing work that opens your eyes—and your heart—to a whole new world, one that is as beautiful and inspiring as it is gritty and harrowing. Jonathan Tepper is an extraordinarily gifted writer who has somehow managed to write a memoir that is at once heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and joyous.
— Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Golden Gate
In stark, often heart-rending prose, Jonathan tells the story of growing up with his three brothers and missionary parents in San Blas, a drug-overrun neighborhood of Madrid. It is a tale of tragedy and triumph in the midst of loss and death. Ultimately, Shooting Up is a powerful testament to the redemptive power of faith, friendship, and love. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. I cried, I laughed, I was changed.
— Tom Webber, author of Flying Over 96th Street: Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy
Shooting Up recounts a young man’s coming of age in the unlikeliest of places and finds joy, wisdom, and humor in the darkest of moments. Reading this book made me think anew about grace, gratitude, and the hard roads that take us there.
— Daniel Swift, author of Bomber County
Jonathan Tepper’s story is remarkable. From his father’s dramatic conversion to the years pioneering Betel, this is the story of no ordinary family. I am so glad that Jonathan is sharing his extraordinary experience through this account.
— Nicky Gumbel, pioneer of the Alpha course and former vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) in London
I, too, grew up as a home-schooled “missionary kid,” so I “get” Jonathan Tepper’s brilliant memoir Shooting Up. Tepper’s story about addiction, AIDS and his parents’ work with addicts in Spain in the 1990s is an insanely entertaining and wild account. In fact, it’s the most riveting memoir I’ve ever read. Who else recalls his childhood with lines like these? “As a graduation gift, my father took me to see drug rehabs. It was what we did as a family.”
Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God
It has been one of the privileges of my life to know the Tepper family and witness first-hand the marvel that is Betel, where countless people have found hope, healing, community, and new beginnings. Here, in his memoir Shooting Up, Jonathan Tepper, with great skill, eloquence, humor, and provocation, tells us the extraordinary story of Betel. This is not just another read—it’s an event.
— Simon Ponsonby, priest, author, and teacher at St. Aldate’s, Oxford
Jonathan Tepper’s gut-wrenching, inspiring memoir Shooting Up immerses you so deeply in its characters that you feel as if you’re living—and suffering—alongside them. Set amid the ravages of the AIDS epidemic in Madrid, this gorgeously crafted coming-of-age story is both luminous and profoundly humane. An unforgettable read that’s impossible to put down.
— Joseph Luzzi, author of My Two Italies and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love
This is a fascinating story, brilliantly told. It recounts the work of two little-known but remarkable American missionaries in the drug-saturated streets of San Blas, Madrid, in an age of AIDS and addiction, told through the eyes of one of their sons. It is gripping, harrowing and tragic - yet somehow also a story of faith, courage and hope.
— The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin; Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness