Night Navigation
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A mother and her adult, drug-addicted son struggle for redemption and recovery in this "dark debut" novel that "has the power to lift and inspire" (Publishers Weekly).
Night Navigation opens on a freezing-rain night in upstate New York: the kindling gone, the fire in the woodstove out. Retired high-school art teacher Del Merrick's thirty-seven-year-old manic-depressive son, Mark, needs a ride, but she's afraid to make the long drive north to the only detox that has a bed.
Through each of the four seasons, Night Navigation takes readers into the deranged, darkly humorous world of the addict—from break-your-arm dealers, to boot-camp rehabs, to Rumi-quoting NA sponsors. Mark can't find a way to live in this world; Del can't stop trying to rescue him. And yet, during this long year's night, through relapse and despair, Mark and Del see flare-ups of hope as they fitfully, painfully try to steer toward the light.
Told in the alternating voices of an addict and his mother, this "harrowing . . . cathartic" novel adds new depths to our understanding and literature of parents and their troubled children (Kirkus Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This dark debut is a wrenching account of a mother and son moving together and apart in an increasingly tragic family drama. In alternating memoirs, Del and Mark deal with heroin addiction and mental illness (his) and fears (hers) of a fate marked by junkies, pushers, halfway houses and recovery programs. But it's the persistent ghosts of a father and another son, and the guilt over their deaths that hold Del and Mark in a vise grip. Between grief and addiction, there's no easy forgiveness for these sad survivors. Through one bitter, lonely year, Mark and Del lose and find one another repeatedly, and they come to realize that loving someone means letting them love themselves. Howard is a graceful, spare and fluid writer, and her somber and bleak novel has the power to lift and inspire.
