FernFolio

Thirteen year-old Samantha Gwynn has a secret that she needs to share, and no one whom she can share it with. Sure, she has some good friends, Angie, Tracey and Vanessa, the type that you can hang around with at school and spend every single Saturday night with having sleep overs, but she can’t tell them about what’s making her scared and angry, and threatening to tear her family apart.
Her father, a successful and well-respected architect, a man about whom she has good memories from her early childhood, is an alcoholic, a drunk. He drinks steadily from the time he gets home from work, each night, and spends most of his Saturdays and Sundays recovering from hangovers. When he sobers up, he rarely remembers what he has done when drunk, often uncertain how he can come to be bruised and battered after falling down stairs or tripping over furniture. Patrick Gwynne knows he’s messed up from time to time, and admits that he often drinks too much, but claims he’s in control and that he can stop drinking anytime he wants to.
Each time his wife has to drive around until she finds him lying drunk under a bridge or fill an ice pack to tend his latest injury, Patrick promises that he’s going to change, and his wife, Ellen, believes his every promise. But for Samantha, Sam, who’s heard all of her father’s promises, these are nothing more than empty lies, and she hates him for making them, just as much as she despises her mother for believing them. Instead, Sam worries about her five year-old brother, Luke, and tries to protect him from the effects of their father’s drinking. She compulsively checks the bottles of alcohol her father has stashed all around the house, furious about his promises to cut back yet longing for her cynicism to prove unfounded.
Unable to talk to her mother or grandmother, or to her good friends, because, as Nana says, “one doesn’t air one’s dirty laundry in public,” Samantha decides to write an anonymous letter to a high school girl she’s seen at the local public library. In her letter, Sam pours out all of her anger and fear, and asks the girl to respond by slipping her advice into the library’s copy of A History of Modern Whaling. So begins Sam’s written correspondence with A.J.K., whose calm and practical responses help to remind the girl that she is not the only teenager with personal troubles.
When her father’s drinking leads to a tragic act of violence, Sam’s life spins out of control and she finds herself having to face up to the consequences of her own drunken behaviour. With her mysterious correspondent’s help, Sam discovers that she has the courage to confront and learn from her mistakes, and that, just maybe, she can forgive her parents for theirs.
Lush is an honest and heartfelt story about the effects of alcoholism on families. Worth the read.
FernFolio Editor