Debut author Karleigh Frisbie Brogan has written a remarkably assured memoir with Holding, an account of her addiction and recovery that reads like a beautiful mosaic of broken glass: sharp, painful, and filled with glints of light.
Uncomfortable in her own skin from an early age and craving warmth from her emotionally distant mother, Brogan found the comfort she craved with heroin after begging her boyfriend, Dale, already a user, to inject her. Full-blown addiction followed soon after. At 20, Brogan and Dale moved into his parents' Northern California home. They intended to stay for a couple of months but lived there for two years. Along the way, Brogan developed a complicated relationship with Dale's mother, Glorianne, whom she came to love but also stole from and lied to constantly. Brogan's addiction worsened, as did the situations she found herself in trying to finance it. Brogan hit several rock bottoms before finally beginning her circuitous but ultimately successful path to recovery.
The quality of Brogan's prose and her deep understanding of her addiction and her own human condition make Holding a standout among similarly themed memoirs. She is frank and insightful about how much she loved her drug of choice and how it enabled her to disconnect from her need for anything else. Her descriptions of shooting up, working as a sex worker, and betraying her loved ones are as lyrical and exquisitely wrought as they are hard to read. That she survived and went on to thrive is a testament to her resilience, and that she was able to create this art from her experience is readers' good fortune. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor