cover image A Lot to Make Up for

A Lot to Make Up for

John Buell. Farrar Straus Giroux, $18.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-374-19177-1

Discovering that victory over addiction doesn't mean freedom from the past, Stan Hagan begins a quest to resurrect a relationship destroyed by alcohol and drugs. Stan's search for Adele Symons takes him to a small Canadian town where Del, he believes, may be living. A clean-cut and purposeful drifter in his late 20s, Stan lives in cheap rented rooms, seeking work to pay his way. Healing is his goal, and his slow progress is aided by new relationships: recalling Adele, an elderly trailer-park resident alludes to her baby boy who, Stan realizes, must be his son also; Martin Lacey, beginning a fragile new life after a heart attack shelters Stan in exchange for farm labor. Del's own drama requires an untangling of facts when she is blackballed from work after refusing the sexual advances of her employer's husband. Stan's quietly desperate odyssey evokes an undercurrent of suspense in this gently told and cautiously hopeful account of life after recovery by the author of The Pyx. (June)