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Austin Carty was once mistaken for a math genius, just one of the wrong turns on his search for truth.

Carty's first professionally published book, "High Points and Lows: Life, Faith, and Figuring It All Out," was issued by Penguin Group this week. Readers will meet a writer who's learned, sometimes painfully, to be honest with himself, with others and with God.

Fans of the CBS reality show "Survivor" might remember Carty from the 2006 season, when he lasted eight episodes before exiting.

I've known the 28-year-old High Point resident much longer. He was a classmate of my son, Andrew, from kindergarten through eighth grade before shifting to Wesleyan Christian Academy for high school. He's a personable, outgoing and forthright young man.

It turns out there was a lot I didn't know until I read his book.

He didn't really mean to cheat on the high school math test that won him brief acclaim as a genius. Friends who'd taken it in an earlier class, and fed him the answers, assured him it didn't count for a grade. Just for a joke, he could surprise the teacher with his brilliance.

Carty was the one surprised, though, when he learned he'd aced a national assessment, a feat so astonishing that Wesleyan teachers and administrators were ready to call the news media to tout their newly discovered Einstein. Enjoying the attention, he wasn't about to set the record straight.

Then he was ratted out and promptly suspended.

Two years later, angry at being excluded from the National Honor Society, he confronted one of his teachers.

"Austin," she said, "you cheat in my class all the time."

He had no idea she'd been wise to him.

But, he got even -- by stealing an honor society shawl. And when he went to college, he told everyone he'd been a member of NHS. Of course, they believed him.

Carty dropped out of college and tried to make it as a model, actor and bartender, not very successfully. He wrote a novel, which he paid to publish himself. (I read it; it wasn't bad, but it wasn't up to professional standards.)

All the while, he was trying to live the way he thought a Christian should live, also with mixed success. Sometimes he thought it was by not drinking, other times he thought he was called to make a sales pitch for his faith at every opportunity. He wasn't very successful with that, either.

Then came "Survivor," which opened a few doors, leading to TV appearances and speaking engagements.

One of those was at Wesleyan Christian Academy.

"The irony of my addressing the students at a school where I had not long before been such a colossal underachiever was certainly not lost on me," he wrote.

"I knew that I had spent all of middle school and high school and college lying to everyone, constantly pretending to be someone I wasn't."

So, after his talk he called to the stage the teacher who had pegged him as a cheater and returned the honor society shawl he'd stolen 10 years earlier. He confessed to lying and cheating. He said it was time to tell the truth.

He remembered being hailed as a math genius, but this was better, Carty wrote.

"I left feeling honest."

"Math Genius" is one of the essays that make up "High Points and Lows." They cover his "fears and struggles and doubts," Carty told me last week. While it's "never fun to relive shameful things that you've done," he's found "so much peace in coming clean."

Taking up other unfinished business, Carty completed a degree in English literature at High Point University last month and says he might like to teach someday.

For now, he has a long book tour already scheduled, starting at Barnes & Noble on Northline Avenue in Greensboro at 7 p.m. Thursday. He's got a book-release party at Carter Brothers Barbecue on Samet Drive in High Point at 2 p.m. Sunday and then a book signing at Barnes & Noble on Mall Loop Road in High Point at 6 p.m. Feb. 5.

A complete list of appearance is at his Web site, www.austincarty.com.

His itinerary includes talks to Christian audiences. He makes clear, in conversation and in his book, that he's no more a typical evangelist than he is a math genius.

"High Points and Lows" isn't going to displace Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life" as a standard for Christian readers, but it's a genuine statement about trying to find the right path in life. Carty may not have all the answers, but he's working out the problems for himself.

Contact Doug Clark at dgclark@news-record.com or 373-7039.