Jeannette Walls tells the story about her childhood. She talks about living like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Retreating to the dismal West Virginia mining town--and the family-- her father, Rex Walls, had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves,...

Seventh-grader Sharkita "Kita" embarks on a tumultuous journey to keep her family together while handling the consequences of her mother's alcoholism.

Jillian Slater hadn't seen her father or his mother in almost 20 years until, on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death, Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, calls and says Jillian's expenses would be paid if she'd fly in to New Orleans for the burial. What Adella didn't tell her was that the apartment house bears the dead weight of a long and painful history. As an investigation into her father's...

A life-threatening illness as a child shows Jenny that her neglectful mother will never take care of her and she spends the next 30 years building a new family until a tragic event causes her two worlds to collide.

"A man mourning his alcoholic father faces a paradox: to pay tribute, lay scorn upon, or pour a drink. A wrenching, dazzling, revelatory debut"-- Provided by publisher.

"From the author of the best-selling Sweetbitter comes an intimate, searingly honest memoir of growing up the child of addicts, of how that turbulent, often harrowing experience has affected her at every stage of her life, and of how she has struggled to transcend this unwanted legacy. When Sweetbitter was published to great success, the author knew she should be happy, but she felt incapable of it, emotionally shut down. She knew too that the roots...

Danielle's father is an alcoholic, as are both of Luke's parents. Nicole's mother is recovering from crack cocaine addiction. How have these teenagers dealt with such overwhelming conditions? This video explores the emotional confusion and trauma affecting children of substance abusers, showing how many young people are able to break the cycle of addiction and create a healthy pattern for their own lives. Important steps in that process are featured-most...

The long-awaited reissue of McFadden's best-selling second novel praised by Toni Morrison, USA Today, Washington Post, and others—published simultaneously with McFadden's new novel Gathering of Waters.

"McFadden's reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold

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Widowed, pregnant, and penniless, Marilee returns home to Cross Roads, New Mexico, only to find that her father has been dead for six months and that her mother hasn't been sober since. But Marilee's determined to make a good life for herself and her baby. Her first order of business: fix up the family's Wayside 66 Motor Court, now rundown and overrun by outlaws. It's dangerous with bootlegger Jeb Pierce around; he'd taken charge of the place and...