She has survived rape, a broken marriage, and decades of addiction. Now she's fighting the hardest battle of all, becoming who she was always meant to be.
Lainie Calloway stands at a podium in an AA meeting and lies. It's only twenty-three days of sobriety, not six months. But some lies, she has learned, are easier than the truth, and the truth is that the bottle on the shelf at home, the one with the Post-it note that reads “Are you done yet?” has been waiting for her a long, long time.
“Prodigal Daughter” follows Lainie through the wreckage and redemption of a life shaped by trauma, alcoholism, and the exhausting work of trying to change. She is funny, fierce, and deeply flawed, a woman who carries a gun to the bathroom of a bar and dances at the edge of her own destruction. Around her is a cast of indelible characters: her dying husband Walter, the indomitable Rose Calloway, and the women of AA who keep showing up even when Lainie doesn't deserve it.
Written with unflinching honesty and deep compassion, Matt Gutbrod's second novel draws on his own twenty-five years of sobriety to illuminate what it truly means to surrender, not to defeat, but to grace.
For anyone who has ever stared at the thing that is killing them and asked, “Am I done yet?” this book is the answer.
