Luke Sullivan

This is a book you will not want to put down. It will make you laugh out loud and cry from beginning to end, and is a heartbreaking chronology of a family's history in an unusual town. It took a lot of guts to write this story and it has a lot to say about the gradual and insidious path that sucks people down into addiction without reprieve. It also reminds us that this path cuts a swath through everyone's lives and the fallout remains for years to come.
The author is correct in pointing out that wives could not easily escape from this destructive web as the societal, economic and family pressures were overwhelmingly against them getting out of such relationships. There really weren't any battered women's shelters in Rochester at that time, and the best one could hope for were family friends who could intervene at some level. The pressures in Rochester, at the time, to downplay these kinds of family problems was enormous. I am amazed that Mrs. Sulllivan was as proactive as she was in protecting her children. I can also understand how their family life went down the slippery slope that it did.
His brother Chris points out that they survived all this because of their mother, grandfather, educational opportunities, time and a great sense of humor and (I suspect) irony. There are many families who cannot laugh at their problems, and I think those are the families who are also most at risk for going under. I am glad this family came out the other side, but am sorry they paid such a high price to do so.
I could not put this book down. You won't be able to either. There are many books out there that discuss dysfunctional families and problems with addiction, but I found that this was incredibly well written and insightful. I was given this book by the
University of Minnesota Press.… (meer)