LOOKIN' FOR LOVE
A Novel
by Susen Edwards
Edwards’ novel traces a woman’s descent into the world of drug trafficking and her search for a better life.
“You made your bed. Now go lie in it,” says Ava Harrison’s harsh mother when her daughter seeks help to escape her abusive marriage. After a childhood of neglect and emotional abuse in New Jersey, Ava marries Tom in 1963, only to discover that they will never make the loving home she craves when Tom beats and rapes her on their wedding night. As a naturally gifted performer, Ava eventually finds liberation through the easy money of dancing at the local club, Gentlemen’s Delight, and she manages to escape her marriage with her two young sons. With hippie drug culture in full swing, it isn’t long before Ava relies on a combination of marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol to fuel her performances and get through her days. After losing custody of her children, she meets her second husband, a loving but lazy stoner named Jack Novak, and the charming Mike Ambrose—a drug trafficker who draws Ava into his world of international smuggling. From Colombia to Kenya, Ava follows Mike into a wild existence very different from her humble beginnings—one with extreme consequences. Edwards immediately captures readers’ sympathy for Ava from the moment she describes her childhood spent as an average girl who just wants her parents’ love and approval. Each of Ava’s increasingly terrible decisions flows logically from her history and the societal pressures on women of the time; it’s hard not to empathize. The novel’s first-person narration has a flowing, conversational style, but it can feel a bit flat at times—in some chapters, it’s as if Ava is merely summarizing large swaths of her life for readers rather than immersing them in her experience. However, some truly harrowing scenes involving abuse, drug smuggling, and foreign prisons all ratchet up the tension and will keep readers engaged along her long road to redemption.
An endearing narrator and surprising turns elevate this novel’s cycles of abuse, addiction, and recovery.