Risking the Rapids: How My Wilderness Adventure Healed My Childhood

#1 New Release in Alcoholism and Christian Self-Help ─ Memoir and Portrait of a Family at Its Worst and BestSome memoirs shock. Some entertain. Some take us places we're afraid to go. A rare few move us. Once in a blue moon, a book does it all. This is Risking the Rapids. Dysfunctional family. Risking the Rapids opens with the shocking death of O'Garden's older brother, which prompts her and other relatives to seek closure on a journey through the remotest spot in Montana. Described genially as a river "float", a harrowing journey unfolds. This wilderness trip is contrasted with O'Garden's account of growing up with her six siblings in a clashing Catholic family. Alcoholic father, mean mother, Catholic guilt. WCCO-TV personality Don O'Brien was well-known in the Twin Cities and in Minnesota. Whether forecasting weather and trading wisecracks with the anchor on the nightly news, pitching for sponsors, or hosting a Saturday night movie, he was a man people trusted. In private, Don O'Brien's family life was a far cry from what his fans saw on TV. Little by little we see the corrosion: nightly martinis shared with his wife Betty, an undemonstrative and icy-hearted mother. The neglect. The poisoning of self-esteem. The rigidity demanded by the Catholic church. Competition. Cruelty. All packed into ordinary days and nights as a sensitive girl comes of age. Anxiety and danger. The children vary in their response to the profound anxiety sown in the offspring of alcoholics. One brother bites his fingers to gangrene. One relentlessly bullies the author, who begins overeating compulsively. One severs all ties with the family. Danger mounts as well on the Montana raft trip, when unusual river conditions swell and speed the waters. Both stories build with escalating intensity to excruciating climaxes. If you read and liked books such as The Liars' Club, The Wounded Heart, Coming Clean, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter, or Remember Me As Loving You, you will want to read Risking the Rapids.

About the Author :
Irene O'Garden has won or been nominated for prizes in nearly every writing category from stage to e-screen, hardcovers, children's books as well as literary magazines and anthologies. Her critically-acclaimed play Women On Fire, (Samuel French) starring Judith Ivey, played sold-out houses at Off-Broadway's Cherry Lane Theatre and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award. Her new play, Little Heart, won her a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Fellowship and was awarded full development at the New Harmony Play Project. O'Garden was awarded a Pushcart Prize for her lyric essay "Glad To Be Human," (Untreed Reads.) Harper published her first memoir Fat Girl and Nirala Press recently published her book Fulcrum, Selected Poems, which contains her prize-winning poem "Nonfiction." Her poems and essays have been featured in dozens of literary journals and award-winning anthologies (including A Slant of Light, USA Book award Best Anthology), and she has been honored with an Alice Desmond Award and an Oppenheimer for her children's books. A seasoned and entertaining presenter both on stage and video, O'Garden has appeared at top literary venues: including The Player's Club, the Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poetry Café, and KGB in Manhattan; The Poetry Café, Mycennae House and Vinyl Deptford in London, and all throughout the Hudson Valley. She's a regular contributor to 650--Where Writers Read, in New York City and Sarah Lawrence College and has received several grants from Poets and Writers. Irene also presents to an audience of hundreds annually at the Global Seth Conference. O'Garden has lived joyfully with her husband John Pielmeier, for 40 years. Most known for his play Agnes of God, John also writes movies and miniseries for television. This year, Scribner published his first novel, Hook's Tale," and his stage adaptation of The Exorcist opened in London's West End.