Night Navigation

A mother and her adult, drug-addicted son struggle for redemption and recovery in this "dark debut" novel that "has the power to lift and inspire" (Publishers Weekly). Night Navigation opens on a freezing-rain night in upstate New York: the kindling gone, the fire in the woodstove out. Retired high-school art teacher Del Merrick's thirty-seven-year-old manic-depressive son, Mark, needs a ride, but she's afraid to make the long drive north to the only detox that has a bed. Through each of the four seasons, Night Navigation takes readers into the deranged, darkly humorous world of the addict--from break-your-arm dealers, to boot-camp rehabs, to Rumi-quoting NA sponsors. Mark can't find a way to live in this world; Del can't stop trying to rescue him. And yet, during this long year's night, through relapse and despair, Mark and Del see flare-ups of hope as they fitfully, painfully try to steer toward the light. Told in the alternating voices of an addict and his mother, this "harrowing . . . cathartic" novel adds new depths to our understanding and literature of parents and their troubled children (Kirkus Reviews).

About the Author :
Ginnah Howard taught high school English for twenty-seven years and began writing when she was in her mid-forties. Her work has appeared in Water Stone Review, Permafrost, and A Room of One's Own, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more information, visit www.ginnahhoward.com.

Review :
"A gritty, unblinking, compassionate portrait of addiction--the deceptions, the exhausting repetitions, and most of all the agonizing dilemmas of parental love, which may or may not have the power to save but can never stop trying." --Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index "Kafka wrote that a book must be the axe to the frozen sea inside us. Ginnah Howard's astonishing debut novel, Night Navigation, is just such an axe: sharp and fierce, enlivening and enlightening. Howard's gripping tale of a mother who can't stop saving the very son who can't be saved lays bare the marrow of familial love--its messy desperation and its stubborn, enduring beauty." --Maud Casey, author of Genealogy and The Shape of Things to Come "Ginnah Howard's raw, vivid account of addiction and codependency unflinchingly explores the vast darkness of guilt and despair. The stark, urgent voices of mother and son ache with anger and love, fear and hope. Howard's ability to dive so deep into the human psyche is a testament to her grace and compassion as a writer. Night Navigation will leave you breathless--a haunting, riveting debut." --Kiara Brinkman, author of Up High in the Trees "In this bold debut, Ginnah Howard navigates the precarious lives of her people with searing compassion and devastating honesty, opening our hearts to the dark wonder of shared grief and the flickering hope of forgiveness." --Melanie Rae Thon, author of Sweet Hearts "Night Navigation is unerring in its grasp of the multiple deceptions of the addictive relationship, the self-deceptions above all. You can't help getting furious at its characters. And you can't help loving them." --Peter Trachtenberg, author of The Book of Calamities "I fully enjoyed and admired this sparely written, unspairing [sic] portrait of a deeply troubled American family. Ginnah Howard is a wonderful new writer." --Hilma Wolitzer, author of Summer Reading "This dark debut is a wrenching account of a mother and son moving together and apart in an increasingly tragic family drama. In alternating memoirs, Del and Mark deal with heroin addiction and mental illness (his) and fears (hers) of a fate marked by junkies, pushers, halfway houses and recovery programs. But it's the persistent ghosts of a father and another son, and the guilt over their deaths that hold Del and Mark in a vise grip. Between grief and addiction, there's no easy forgiveness for these sad survivors. Through one bitter, lonely year, Mark and Del lose and find one another repeatedly, and they come to realize that loving someone means letting them love themselves. Howard is a graceful, spare and fluid writer, and her somber and bleak novel has the power to lift and inspire." --Publishers Weekly "As 'Night Navigation' undulates between Del's point of view and Mark's, Howard lets their tense interactions and inability to communicate propel the novel, never attempting to rationalize their problems or forcing them to succumb to psychoanalytic clichés. . . . The strength of this story pulls Howard's readers along, unable to turn away from a fierce mother and son who are determined to negotiate the future without having to 'detour around every moment of their past.'" --The New York Times Book Review