A Clean Mess: A Memoir of Sobriety After a Lifetime of Being Numb

Jenkins takes readers on a rollicking ride-along through her addiction and recovery in the moving and darkly comic follow-up to High Achiever. In 2013, after Jenkins completed stints in jail and rehab for stealing to pay for drugs, she joined a halfway house, found work in her recovery program, and started serving probation. Then, in rapid succession, she met her husband, had a child, and started raising a family. Suddenly stable and sober, Jenkins sought help from a therapist after her husband broke his own sobriety. Their sessions helped Jenkins understand her addictions as covers for feelings of inadequacy and anxiety—particularly related to fears that she and her husband weren’t compatible. As Jenkins grappled with the possibility of ending her marriage, her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, throwing her life further out of whack. Jenkins’s raw reflections have the rueful quality of diary entries (“During the years I should have been learning to save money, file taxes, and pay bills, I was stuck on a train to nowhere”). Throughout, she avoids facile empowerment messages while still providing hope for those lingering near rock bottom. This inspires. (June)