Warning: Out-of-genre,
this is not a crime novel
After running
through a series of detective-crime novels about a current, previously active, or
relapsing alcoholic (James Lee Burke, Ken Bruen, C. J. Box, and others), I’ve
run into this excellent and well-written tale of alcoholic relapse and recovery
by John Smyth.
What would drive
a man who has been sober for 13 years to pick up a drink again and fall back
into the abyss he had crawled from? Smyth successfully takes the reader through
the struggles of Henry Patrick Mueller to come to terms with his alcoholism and
the demon with which he constantly contends. More than just being the tale of
the drunk fighting for sobriety, Smyth took us intimately through the
experience of Mueller’s family, his wife and teenage children. The author added
to Mueller’s tale by poignantly bringing in another family who was just coming
to terms with the polysubstance and spousal abuse of Paul Lamont, the husband
and father.
This book is
full of insightful AA and Al-Anon experiences. The stories that Smyth tells are
not remarkable or new, and they are fairly typical of what is talked about in
recovery programs every day. He enriches the story by having Mueller talk about
and explain his internal battle to some non-alcoholics. I think this would be a
helpful novel to anyone who is somewhere in the recovery process, from early in
sobriety to one who is long sober, to any friend of family member who is
contending with a beloved’s addictions, or anyone else who is curious about the
lives of people who fight with addiction demons.
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