A Clean Heart: A Novel (Alcoholism, Dysfunctional Family, Recovery, Redemption, 12-Steps)

Product Description

A Novel of Redemption from Addiction and a Broken Family
“A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject. I enjoyed this book.” –Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist
Carter Kirchner struggles to stay sane and sober as a counselor at Six West, an adolescent drug treatment center run by Sister Mary Xavier, a hard-drinking nun with an MBA. The young Kirchner is caught between Sister Mary’s plan to rescue the center by reforming a hard-case kid and the dysfunctional staff’s clumsy plan to intervene on their boss’s drinking. Meanwhile, Carter’s mother―who never forgave him for giving up a promising hockey career to treat his own addiction―lands in the hospital with an advanced case of cirrhosis. Before Carter can help the young addict commissioned to his care or safely navigate the staff’s dysfunctional intervention effort, he must rescue himself from his family’s broken past.
A Clean Heart is a novel by John Rosengren, a writer and recent nominee for a Pulitzer Prize who knows the territory of addiction. He went through treatment at age 17 and has been clean and sober since 1981. He also worked in adolescent treatment centers when he was younger. John Rosengren’s articles have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, and Utne Reader.
If you are a fan of the 2018 films Ben is Back or David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy or have read addiction memoirs such as If You Love Me or We All Fall Down, you will love reading John Rosengren’s A Clean Heart.

Review

“John Rosengren is the Minneapolis-based author of nine books, most recently
A Clean Heart, a novel centered on the staff and patients of an adolescent drug treatment center inspired, in part, by Minnesota’s pioneering St. Mary’s. At a time of increased concern about drug and alcohol abuse―a June CDC study found 13 percent of respondents had started or increased substance use to cope with the pandemic―Rosengren shares his personal experience with addiction, recovery, and thirty-nine years of sobriety.”
―
Minneapolis Star Tribune

“It was like reading one of my favorite Dean Koontz books, only the evil in this book was the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction. And it has a happy(ish) ending that I’m sure Koontz would love. I give this book FIVE STARS.”
―Jeannie Rabb Marshal in
Keys to Recovery newspaper

“Set in 1991 in the early days of chemical dependency treatment, John Rosengren’s
A Clean Heart follows the daily routine of Carter, a young counselor at a teen treatment facility. The book, which switches back and forth from Carter’s troubled childhood to present day, provides a wealth of details and insight into the daily life and struggles of both staff and residents at a typical treatment center of the time. [This is] a novel that will strike a chord with readers wrestling with substance abuse, the Catholic faith, or family trauma.”
―Alison McGhee, author of
Shadow Baby and
Never Coming Back

“With echoes of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rosengren writes with great empathy for the misfits and outsiders of Six West (whose halls are stalked by the unforgettable Sister X).
A Clean Heart grapples with life’s most difficult puzzles: how we navigate the tangled bonds of family, and how we save ourselves, ultimately, by becoming vulnerable. A redemptive and affecting novel.”
–Will McGrath, author of
Everything Lost Is Found Again

“
A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject. I enjoyed this book.”
–Thomas Beller, author of
The Sleep-Over Artist

“In his powerful new book,
A Clean Heart, John Rosengren reminds us that the journey of body and soul is best taken with another, or others, that somehow tie their healing to our own. Set in a rehab center for teens, each level of recovery―or descent―is housed in