RESTLESS REINS

Life coach Towle offers a memoir about alcoholism, recovery, and finding herself.

Over the course of this book, the author tells the story of her addiction to alcohol—how it started, how it affected her life, how she overcame it, and how she found her calling as an intervention specialist. The first part, though, is less explicitly about alcohol; instead, Towle discusses her experiences as an unsettled, insecure young person who craved love but distrusted commitment. Readers learn about her family members, and how her father’s alcoholism affected all of their lives. Towle’s father insulted her mother frequently and cruelly expected the author and her siblings to choose sides in family conflicts. But the author also “saw his soft and hurting side and wondered how he could be so mean.” Throughout, Towle effectively explores the difference between a person and their disease. She goes on to tell of how she traveled around Europe, went to college, and found work as a journalist in Boston. She still felt lost and began drinking more to cope with feelings of inferiority. Eventually, she moved to San Francisco and became engaged to another journalist, who also struggled with alcohol. When Towle managed to convince him to seek help, she realized that she, too, was an alcoholic. The author forced herself to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and she also found friends, fulfilment, and a sense of community in the organization. A workshop about interventions convinced her that she had found something that she could do well. Towle is a spirited narrator who writes candidly and with plenty of humor and emotion, and she presents readers with matter-of-fact analyses of different episodes in her life. She’s willing to admit when she doesn’t have answers, and she avoids the trap of reducing every anecdote to a lesson. The book’s structure, though, feels a bit lopsided. The earlier chapters about Towle’s travels feel overlong and disconnected from the rest of the book, and her later work as an intervention specialist gets too little attention. Even so, readers will likely get a great deal out of this book.

An engaging, thoughtful remembrance with an engaging voice.