Book Review
Dirty

By Meredith Maran
Reviewed by Bill London
from the July 2004 Newsletter

When teenagers drift into an angry, self-destructive, drug/alcohol-addicted worldview, their parents are often lost as well, uncertain of what to do and where to turn.

Meredith Maran's book, Dirty, is a great place to start for anyone who wants to understand what is happening to America's youth and why. Maran wrote this book after she almost lost her own son, Jesse, to a cycle of drugs, crime and rebellion. She continued her search for answers. And this is what she discovered: “one-quarter of the teenagers in America are living, and dying, high and wasted. To save them, we’ve got to fix what is wrong with adolescent drug treatment. More important, we’ve got to fix what's wrong with the treatment of adolescents.”

To investigate teen drug culture, Maran selected 3 very different teenagers to befriend, counsel, study, and hopefully understand. Mike, the crank addict, Tristan, the psychedelic dreamer, and Zalika, the prostitute, all told her their stories and shared their treatment choices.

There were no happy endings to their stories. But this book is a honest, deliberate, and very real attempt to illuminate the very murky pathway to teen sobriety. Maran writes well, and the passion and sorrow of the stories kept me reading. She did a great job of getting a handle on this huge issue.

This book is available at BookPeople and at the Moscow library.

Bill London edits this newsletter and remains thankful that communication with his daughter was never severed in such a sorrowful way.

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