Night Navigation opens on a freezing-rain night in upstate New York: the kindling gone, the fire in the woodstove out. Del's thirty-seven-year-old manic-depressive son needs a ride, but she's afraid to make the long drive north to the only detox that has a bed. Through the four seasons, Night Navigation takes us into the deranged, darkly humorous world of the addict-from break-your-arm dealers, to boot-camp rehabs, to Rumi-quoting NA sponsors. Al-Anon tells Del to "let go"; NAMI tells her to "hang on." Mark cannot find a way to live in this world. Del cannot stop trying to rescue him. And yet, during this long year's night, through relapse and despair, they see flare-ups of hope as Mark and Del fitfully, painfully try to steer toward the light. Told in the alternating voices of an addict and his mother, this riveting novel adds new depths to our understanding and our literature of parents and their troubled children.
"A gritty, unblinking, compassionate portrait of addiction - the deceptions, the exhausting repetitions, and most of all the agonizing dilemmas of parental love, which may or may not have the power to save but can never stop trying."
Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index
"Kafka wrote that a book must be the axe to the frozen sea inside us. Ginnah Howard's astonishing debut novel, Night Navigation, is just such an axe: sharp and fierce, enlivening and enlightening. Howard's gripping tale of a mother who can't stop saving the very son who can't be saved lays bare the marrow of familial love--its messy desperation and its stubborn, enduring beauty."
Maud Casey, author of Genealogy and The Shape of Things to Come
"Ginnah Howard's raw, vivid account of addiction and codependency unflinchingly explores the vast darkness of guilt and despair. The stark, urgent voices of mother and son ache with anger and love, fear and hope. Howard's ability to dive so deep into the human psyche is a testament to her grace and compassion as a writer. Night Navigation will leave you breathless--a haunting, riveting debut."
