MEDIA: BOOK REVIEW –

April 30, 2021 – So many of her family members — her parents and her children, a brother and former husbands in particular — were addicted to drugs and alcohol, as she was, and were in and out of prisons, rehab centers and other institutions. One husband, a biker who spent three years in prison for a crime that is not specified, made methamphetamine in a lab, stabbed a driver in a road rage incident and was so terrifying that Lillian escaped from the house without telling him where she was going, even though she was sole owner of the house. Each time I thought, “This cannot get any worse; how much can one person suffer?” on the very next page it gets worse.

Particularly heartbreaking are the countless episodes in which her son and daughter return to their addictions again and again and again just when there seemed to be a sliver of hope for recovery. And the grandchild who was bounced around like a basketball because of his mother’s (Lillian’s daughter) drug addiction. And a brother who goes to prison for sexually abusing his own 14-year-old daughter. And Lillian, who has been “clean” for 20 years, was herself abandoned as a child by her addicted parents, but she seems to be the one every human wrecking ball turns to for help.

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