Whiskey's Children

Rating:
Summary: An excellent story about growing up as an alcoholic!
Review: Jack Erdmann tells a story with more ups and downs than a rollercoaster! It's amazing that he lived to tell about it and he provides hope for anyone who's ever considered himself to be a "hopeless alcoholic". It's a story for anyone who's ever struggled with the "love/hate" relationship with an alcoholic parent. Erdmann paints a moving emotional picture in telling his story! An exceptional book!

Rating:
Summary: A searing, unsparing odyssey from the gutter to the light
Review: Jack Erdmann's story of his long struggle back from the strangling grip that alcoholism held on his life, as well as over members of his family for four generations, is a tour de force. This book is not just for alcoholics, or for drinkers who feel that they "don't have a problem," it is for everyone who is willing to accompany Erdmann on a harrowing journey.

For those readers with alcoholics in the family, they--we--find ourselves nodding with recognition, and ultimately uplifted by the knowledge that there's a way up from the bottom. They will find assistance from now-sober alcoholics "with kind eyes, offering hot cups of bad coffee," in the words of Anne Lamott, a recovering alcoholic herself, who wrote the foreword.

You want an "easy, feel-good" book--well, there are plenty of THOSE. You want one that will change your life, or that of someone whom you love, or that will give breathtaking insights into the lives of the alcoholics you know, "Whiskey's Children" is the best effort I've found. There are pathos, self-degradation, guilt, self-loathing, and even a quiet humor in these pages.

If Amazon offered more than five stars, Erdmann and his co-author Larry Kearney would have earned them many times over. Not just for writing, but from their phoenix-life resurrection from the ashes of an alcoholic life.

This is a wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Erdmann's tale reminds me of Angela's Ashes.
Review: The revisiting of an alcoholic to his childhood memories is not the tale of woe one might expect. Jack Erdmann and Larry Kearney manage truthfulness without blame, humor without hysteria. The clarity of the telling is not what one might expect from someone who was abused but it is the result of recovery. In this natural drama of one man's history and journey through alcoholism there is a remarkable return to integrity and nobility via needing others and God. The struggle against these cures makes the storyline applicable to all readers, wrenching at core issues numbed by other anesthetics, other addictions besides alcoholism.

The memorable descriptions are vivid, "she was a church-driven woman". The tension and trauma of the subject are delivered smoothly using word pictures instead of verbal assaults. The bitterness is not there. Objective but personal observation keeps the reader neutral but engaged. Anyone who sees generational patterns of pain, anyone in recovery, anyone with a family that hurts will connect here in these pages.

I loved this book.

Rating:
Summary: THIS IS A GREAT BOOK!
Review: This is an extremely well written account of the effect drinking has on families. From the tyranny of his drunken father to his own acts of mindless, unheeding drunkeness as an adult, Erdmann paints a vivid picture of what it's like to drink too much, too often, and not seem to be able to stop even though it's destroying everything in your life. As enjoyable as The Lost Weekend.

Rating:
Summary: I thought it was terrific.
Review: Whiskey's Children touched me far more than Angela's Ashes. It hit me in emotional places I hadn't visited for a long, long time. The prose was brilliant. As Annie Lamott the New York Times Best Selling Author wrote in her forward: "a story so beautifully told it will leave you shaking with wonder". Exactly! When I read the rave reviews on the jacket I was struck by Senator George McGovern's remarks: "Heartbreaking and soaring. A testament of survivial and hope for all who suffer from this affliction". D. May

I believe Whiskey's Children is the most powerful and inspirational book ever written on alcoholism.

Everyone who loves a fast and gripping read should run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore and pick one up.