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The Utter Catastrophe
It’s the summer of 2016, the opioid crisis is hitting New Hampshire hard, and tiny Lawson is not exempt. New Chief of Police Winslow Jennings is already being challenged by it when the epidemic strikes shockingly close to home.
But the Jennings have it easy compared to their young cousin Megan Cantwell. She’s just come home to hunt for her first job out of college when her whole life blows up. In the aftermath, she offers a home to the daughters of a local preacher’s son who’s struggling with recovery. She’d squashed her unrequited feelings for him long ago, but she can’t help rooting for him and his two little girls now.
However, she'd have to be crazy to get involved with a heroin addict. Right?
How far should forgiveness go? How do we avoid crossing the line between supporting those we love and enabling them? In THE UTTER CATASTROPHE, Sandra Hutchison applies her trademark warmth and wit to the wrenching dilemmas of families coping with addiction and loss — and hoping against hope for a happy ending.
But the Jennings have it easy compared to their young cousin Megan Cantwell. She’s just come home to hunt for her first job out of college when her whole life blows up. In the aftermath, she offers a home to the daughters of a local preacher’s son who’s struggling with recovery. She’d squashed her unrequited feelings for him long ago, but she can’t help rooting for him and his two little girls now.
However, she'd have to be crazy to get involved with a heroin addict. Right?
How far should forgiveness go? How do we avoid crossing the line between supporting those we love and enabling them? In THE UTTER CATASTROPHE, Sandra Hutchison applies her trademark warmth and wit to the wrenching dilemmas of families coping with addiction and loss — and hoping against hope for a happy ending.
390 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 17, 2021
3 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
About the author
Sandra Hutchison
11 books85 followersBorn and raised in the Tampa Bay area, Sandra Hutchison survived her parents' move to the small town of Greenfield, Massachusetts and eventually stopped sulking about it, though it's possible she's still working it out in her fiction. She currently lives in upstate New York.
A former adjunct professor, high school English teacher, acquisitions editor, marketing manager, creative director, and freelance copywriter, Sandra founded Sheer Hubris Press in 2013 to put all those skills to work at the same time.
If you're trying to reach her, you must defeat your auto-correct and insist on HutchISon (not HutchINson!) to search or email her at sandrahutchison at sheerhubris.com.
Although commenting on Amazon reviews is apparently unseemly, she welcomes your honest feedback, and she will happily respond to most messages sent via email, here at Goodreads, or via Facebook or Twitter.
A former adjunct professor, high school English teacher, acquisitions editor, marketing manager, creative director, and freelance copywriter, Sandra founded Sheer Hubris Press in 2013 to put all those skills to work at the same time.
If you're trying to reach her, you must defeat your auto-correct and insist on HutchISon (not HutchINson!) to search or email her at sandrahutchison at sheerhubris.com.
Although commenting on Amazon reviews is apparently unseemly, she welcomes your honest feedback, and she will happily respond to most messages sent via email, here at Goodreads, or via Facebook or Twitter.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 14, 2022
Hutchison has done it again; she has written a book that sweeps the reader into its fictional world!
In the third and final book (much to my dismay) of the Lawson Trilogy, the topics are much, much heavier—the opioid crisis, drug addiction and recovery—yet it is tempered by a romance.
It’s the summer of 2016. Winslow Jennings is now Lawson’s Chief of Police. He and the other chiefs in the nearby small towns are overwhelmed with drug-related deaths. Winslow doesn’t realize it, but the crisis is about to hit home.
Everyone in Lawson has noted that Winslow’s cousin, Dave Cantwell, and Dave’s wife, Peggy, have been acting strange. They seldom leave the house anymore, don’t interact with their old friends or their extended family. It’s been a bad year for them with Dave hurting his back at work. But they still manage to make it work. Or so they thought.
The Cantwell’s have three children: Megan, Mike and Zach. Megan, twenty-one and just home from college, has noticed that her parents were acting stranger than usual, but she shrugged it off as to her being away. When they overdose in a nearby town after making a buy, it is up to Megan to become the adult. Mike is in Afghanistan and Zach is a middle-schooler.
As Megan tries to sort out her parents’ financial affairs and save their farm, there is another problem looming on the horizon. Seems her first, and only so far, love, Noah, is back in Lawson. He has recently been discharged from a rehab center and is home to bury his wife and raise his daughter. But can Noah say clean? Megan still has feelings for him, but it would not be smart to get involved with a drug addict.
At times, “The Utter Catastrophe” was a tough book to read, but Hutchison managed it with compassion. I really liked that Hutchison focused on those left behind to clean up the mess(es) and muddle their way through life instead on the addicts themselves, and how they could not get off that road.
I also like that Winslow and Mary did not take center stage in this chapter, but they were strong supporting characters. The Somali refugee family (whose names I can no longer recall) are also supporting characters who help to frame the story of a small town in big trouble.
“The Utter Catastrophe” is another 5-star read in Julie’s world!
In the third and final book (much to my dismay) of the Lawson Trilogy, the topics are much, much heavier—the opioid crisis, drug addiction and recovery—yet it is tempered by a romance.
It’s the summer of 2016. Winslow Jennings is now Lawson’s Chief of Police. He and the other chiefs in the nearby small towns are overwhelmed with drug-related deaths. Winslow doesn’t realize it, but the crisis is about to hit home.
Everyone in Lawson has noted that Winslow’s cousin, Dave Cantwell, and Dave’s wife, Peggy, have been acting strange. They seldom leave the house anymore, don’t interact with their old friends or their extended family. It’s been a bad year for them with Dave hurting his back at work. But they still manage to make it work. Or so they thought.
The Cantwell’s have three children: Megan, Mike and Zach. Megan, twenty-one and just home from college, has noticed that her parents were acting stranger than usual, but she shrugged it off as to her being away. When they overdose in a nearby town after making a buy, it is up to Megan to become the adult. Mike is in Afghanistan and Zach is a middle-schooler.
As Megan tries to sort out her parents’ financial affairs and save their farm, there is another problem looming on the horizon. Seems her first, and only so far, love, Noah, is back in Lawson. He has recently been discharged from a rehab center and is home to bury his wife and raise his daughter. But can Noah say clean? Megan still has feelings for him, but it would not be smart to get involved with a drug addict.
At times, “The Utter Catastrophe” was a tough book to read, but Hutchison managed it with compassion. I really liked that Hutchison focused on those left behind to clean up the mess(es) and muddle their way through life instead on the addicts themselves, and how they could not get off that road.
I also like that Winslow and Mary did not take center stage in this chapter, but they were strong supporting characters. The Somali refugee family (whose names I can no longer recall) are also supporting characters who help to frame the story of a small town in big trouble.
“The Utter Catastrophe” is another 5-star read in Julie’s world!
Read
October 28, 2021Okay, this is my book, but I'm reviewing it because I love the story of Megan and Noah. I couldn't even figure out for myself how it would end until I wrote it (though I sure hoped it would end happily). Opioid addiction is so tough. This one does have, as one of my early readers put it, "a higher body count than usual." Sadly, that's the reality of opioids in New Hampshire and the rest of the country. Fortunately, the early readers have loved it anyway.
In this one I also brought Roger back. (Evil laugh.) He was an alcoholic in the first novel, so it seemed like a decent fit with the theme of addiction. Besides, I wondered what the guy's been up to.
What else? We have goats. We have a mortician who wears A LOT of make-up and doesn't know that she shouldn't bring shop talk to the dinner table. We have an adorable but challenging little girl partly named after a Teen Titan. And we meet Priscilla, Winslow and Mary's daughter. (She was named after her Grandma Jennings.)
So: Hope you read it, hope you enjoy it, hope you review it. You know the drill. And I'm always happy to hear from you. Cheers!
In this one I also brought Roger back. (Evil laugh.) He was an alcoholic in the first novel, so it seemed like a decent fit with the theme of addiction. Besides, I wondered what the guy's been up to.
What else? We have goats. We have a mortician who wears A LOT of make-up and doesn't know that she shouldn't bring shop talk to the dinner table. We have an adorable but challenging little girl partly named after a Teen Titan. And we meet Priscilla, Winslow and Mary's daughter. (She was named after her Grandma Jennings.)
So: Hope you read it, hope you enjoy it, hope you review it. You know the drill. And I'm always happy to hear from you. Cheers!
Read
June 13, 2022This is my book and I love it because even as I wrote it I wasn't sure I could give a love story involving opioids a happy ending that would be plausible. It does begin with what one of my early readers called a "higher body count than usual." Right up until the last few chapters I was in genuine suspense whether I could get my hero and heroine to something happy and believe it. Here's to the brave people I've known who inspire me by hanging tough on their own roads to sobriety.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews