Jack Erdmann delivers a gift - a brutally honest true story about one man's struggle with alcohol. However, this book is more than just a book about alcohol and alcoholics - it is a great story, period. The language may be raw or lyrical, and the story is heartbreaking, funny, and ultimately filled with hope. If you enjoy this book read 'Whiskey's Children', by the same author.

What a wonderful, wonderful book about the recovery and the real life application of the
twelve steps that have taken a man from hell into sobriety and sanity. This is a inspiring
honest book about a man who finds hope and the miracles that follow.
A great book !!

Jack Erdmann has walked the walk of an alcoholic and takes us inside the mind, heart and soul of the person that is hopelessly addicted. The emotional trauma that is involved in the machine of a family disease is gut renching. I cried and I laughed and I held my breath. Nobody knows the incomprehensible hold of alcohol like this author. I have read many books about the disease of alcohol and recovery testamonials but this book lays it on the line like no other. There is hope for the alcoholic and that comes shinning through in Mr. Erdmann's book. The machinery has to stop somewhere in the family of the alcoholic. It seems to be a genetic, inherited disease that needs early intervention. People do not have to go through the hell Jack did if they will heed the warning signs. Friends and family have a mandatory responsibility to intervene when the signals of alcohol or addiction are waving frantically in their faces. A great book!!!!

Jack Erdmann tells a story with more ups and downs than a rollercoaster! It's amazing that he lived to tell about it and he provides hope for anyone who's ever considered himself to be a "hopeless alcoholic". It's a story for anyone who's ever struggled with the "love/hate" relationship with an alcoholic parent. Erdmann paints a moving emotional picture in telling his story! An exceptional book!

The revisiting of an alcoholic to his childhood memories is not the tale of woe one might expect. Jack Erdmann and Larry Kearney manage truthfulness without blame, humor without hysteria. The clarity of the telling is not what one might expect from someone who was abused but it is the result of recovery. In this natural drama of one man's history and journey through alcoholism there is a remarkable return to integrity and nobility via needing others and God. The struggle against these cures makes the storyline applicable to all readers, wrenching at core issues numbed by other anesthetics, other addictions besides alcoholism.

The memorable descriptions are vivid, "she was a church-driven woman". The tension and trauma of the subject are delivered smoothly using word pictures instead of verbal assaults. The bitterness is not there. Objective but personal observation keeps the reader neutral but engaged. Anyone who sees generational patterns of pain, anyone in recovery, anyone with a family that hurts will connect here in these pages.

I loved this book.