Parched: A Memoir

One womans journey to the bottom of the bottleand back.

In this tragicomic memoir about alcoholism as spiritual thirst, Heather Kingwriter, lawyer, and National Public Radio commentatordescribes her descent into the depths of addiction. Spanning a decades-long downward spiral, Kings harrowing story takes us from a small-town New England childhood to hitchhiking across the country to a cockroach-ridden artists loft in Boston. Waitressing at ever-shabbier restaurants, deriving what sustenance she could from books, she became a morning regular at a wet-brain-drunks barand that was after graduating from law school.

Saved by her family from the abyss, King finally realized that uniquely poetic, sensitive, and profound though she may have been, she was also a big-time mess. Casting her lot with the rest of humanity at last, she learned that suffering leads to redemption, that personal pain leads to compassion for others in pain, and, above all, that a sense of humor really, really helps.