Set in rural, poverty-stricken North Carolina, this novel follows two young women best friends as they journey through the highs and lows of friendship, love, and addiction.
Irene, a lonely nineteen-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joy ride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to fund the next high.
Together, Irene and Luce run nickel-tossing scams at the county fair and trick dealers into trading legit pharms for birth-control pills. Everything is wild and wonderful until Luce finds a boyfriend who wants to help her get clean. Soon the two of them decide to move away and start a new, sober life in Florida—leaving Irene behind.
Told in a riveting dialogue between the girls’ addicted past and their hopes for a better future, Bewilderness is not just a brilliant, funny, heartbreaking novel about opioid abuse, it’s also a moving look at how intense, intimate friendships can shape every young woman’s life.
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“Raw, powerful, and unflinching, the novel immerses readers in the minute-by-minute mindset of addiction…Flips between past and present, swapping the language of sobriety for the slang of active addiction to give readers a full picture of the pair’s mental state…Tucker’s novel champions the strength it takes to stay clean when every other decision is so much simpler.”
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Booklist (starred review)