Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novels deal with the human condition; our complex natures, our frailties, the mistakes we make, as well as our ability to forgive, to learn, to change, and to show compassion to others. All of her novels feature, to some extent, unlikely people who forge families. In “Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe,” we meet Addie Finch, a tough security guard who hides her emotions behind the brittle walls she has erected around herself.
We learn that Addie is a combat veteran and was a police officer until drinking ended her career. Now she’s a security guard for a storage facility, eight years sober, and attending AA. But her job is lonely; she stares into computer monitors showing camera shots of the storage units from dusk til dawn. She is supposed to keep the homeless people who frequent the nearby abandoned warehouse from sleeping in vacant storage units. She thought her life had hit rock bottom, but as we see in this novel, there were depths she had yet to plummet.
One night, she finds an injured, frightened, seventeen-year-old boy huddled in a vacant unit. Something about him causes her to do something unusual. She lets him sleep in her SUV, where he’ll be warm and protected. One night. And he tells her that he hopes, for her good deed, that good Karma comes her way. Addie really needs some good Karma, and while she doesn’t believe in it, she hopes that maybe, just maybe, some good luck will come her way.
Addie has been attending AA meetings, but her sponsor died over a year ago. She asks a long-time attendee, Wendy, if she would be Addie’s sponsor. Wendy consents, but she has several requirements that Addie must agree to, including complete honesty. These demands, including that Addie complete some AA steps again, are part of what help Addie in her journey.
In her efforts to help Jonathan and the other homeless people who use the warehouse for shelter and to protect them from a dangerous bully, Addie does something that unleashes deep turmoil in her soul. There are unintended consequences. Addie doesn’t know how to deal with those emotions, and she feels bereft.
Addie’s sponsor helps as Addie struggles with feelings that she doesn’t realize are depression until Wendy points it out. She comments about Addie’s share during an AA meeting, when Addie describes her feelings of being in a boat and going nowhere, and feeling that the world is dark and thick. Wendy tells her, “That was just about the best description of depression I think I’ve ever heard.”
But it takes more than one person to help Addie. Jonathan, the teenager she helped who moves in with her, becomes a sort of adopted grandchild. Addie is the first person in Jonathan’s life to care about him, and he fiercely reciprocates that emotion.
Young people often inhabit Ryan Hyde’s novels, and in this one she creates not just one, but two needy teenagers. They are both homeless, but very different from each other in many ways. Jonathan is the boy she takes under her wing, an innocent boy who has been attacked, abandoned by his mother when she left him with his alcoholic father. When he ran away from his father, his mother refused to take him back in. Jonathan is pathetically grateful for whatever Addie gives him, but also takes care of Addie, and eventually, they become the family that each needs.
The other teenager, Jeannie, is younger than Jonathan. But in addition to being homeless, she is an addict. She, like Jonathan, has been beaten and abused while homeless. Jonathan befriended her and both Addie and he want to help her. Addie tells her about NA and takes her to meetings.
As is standard in Ryan Hyde’s novels, there are concepts that she develops that make readers stop, reread, and consider carefully what they have just read. Her novels present universal truths, statements about life and people that ring true for us all. For example, Wendy tells Addie that laying in bed and trying to think about where to go next isn’t the way to proceed. “You’re doing it backward, hon.” She says life doesn’t work that way. “You want to know what life has in store for you? Then get up and start living it and you’ll find out. You can’t figure it out in your head first. Put one foot in front of the other.”
Well into the novel I wondered about the lack of a dog, or cat, or chicken. Some animal that provides the unconditional love that Ryan Hyde believes in and often uses in her novels. I was not disappointed. In fact, Ryan Hyde demonstrates the fact that our companion animals can help bring out feelings that were buried deep inside. The gentle touch of a dog can cause a wellspring of emotion. And just having a dog or cat is comforting, which is why people have emotional support animals.
This novel really dives deep into the soul of those suffering from addiction. The author writes so convincingly about the problems, the struggles, and the path to sobriety, that I asked her if she wrote from personal experience. She graciously shared that, “I am a recovering person with quite a few years of experience.” One of the reasons this novel and the characters in it feel so real is that the author has lived through beating addiction. She convincingly conveys the feelings, the emotions, and the battle one encounters along the way.
This might seem to be a novel about people who are flawed. But it’s not. It’s really a story about people who weren’t given a fair chance to be all they could be. People who were abused as children, neglected, subject to violence. Ryan Hyde’s brilliance shines when she shows us everyday people who in their own ways are heroes. Because for some people, just surviving each day is heroic. And for those who can also be generous, charitable, and help others? They are stupendous. Like all her books, this one is touching, heartwarming, and thought-provoking; everything we have come to expect from a Catherine Ryan Hyde novel. We don’t want their story to end.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.