It’s always somebody else’s kid―until it’s yours. When Katherine James and her husband found out their son was using heroin, their responses ran the gamut: disbelief, anger, helplessness, guilt.
As they struggled to come to grips with their son’s addiction and decide how best to help him, their home became a refuge for an unlikely assortment of their son’s friends, each with their own story, drawn by the simple love and acceptance they found there―“the Lost Boys,” James calls them.
In this sensitive, vulnerable memoir, award-winning novelist James turns her lush prose to a new purpose: to tell her family’s story through the twists and turns of her son’s addiction, overdose, and slow recovery. The result is not just a look at the phenomenon of drug abuse in suburban America, but also a meditation on the particular anguish of loving a wayward child and clinging to a desperate trust in God’s providence through it all.
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“With absolutely piercing prose, Katherine James shows us not only how to write but she also gently, vulnerably shows us how to pray, to trust, and to love even when walking through pain and suffering. I ate it up in two days! A Prayer for Orion is about more than a son’s addiction or a mother’s love—it is about the relentless love of God, who is present right through whatever we imagine as the very worst. Read it, let it move around your heart and propel you to love your people, your place, and your own lost boys.”
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Ashley Hales, author of Finding Holy in the Suburbs