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Hoping to avoid the consequences of his crimes, an alcoholic veteran enters treatment, beginning a circuitous and altogether riveting journey to recovery.
On an early summer morning in 2018, 38-year-old veteran Will Witherspoon wakes from a blackout on a riverbank with a boxcutter in his pocket, haunted by a murderous recollection—but missing most other memories of the day before.
Soon, he is making his way across a variety of rehab and recovery centers in the coastal town of Wilmington, NC—existing in the liminal world where addicts and alcoholics climb precariously out of the abyss. It’s a rough world populated by folks from all walks of life—each with a harrowing story. Will recounts it all—though his own path is not easy or pretty—he endures jail, a relapse, and a devastating hurricane, as well as a torrid, ill-timed romance. However, in the community he embraces, grace may sometimes flourish more powerfully than in all other places on earth.
In vivid prose, award-winning poet Michael White brings readers a gritty and class-conscious ode to recovery, focused on some of the most vulnerable among us. It is here where Will Witherspoon must find the answers to his hazy, awful past and the path to his future.
Michael White is the author of four collections of poetry and a memoir, Travels in Vermeer (Persea 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award. He has published widely including in: The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Western Humanities Review, and the Best American Poetry. His most recent collection is Persea’s Vermeer in Hell, winner of the Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award. White was a founding member of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where he makes his home.
