Bewilderness (2021) by Karen Tucker

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bewilderness (2021)

by Karen Tucker

523 N. Main St. Troy, North Carolina

North Carolina: 7/20

   Due to my job as a criminal defense lawyer working in Federal Court, I have ample time to contemplate the vagaries of life as a drug addict, since that epithet describes many of my clients.  Thus, this novel, about two young, female opiate addicts living in the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina was always going to be a challenge for me.  I started by checking out the Audiobook but had to give up about a third of the way in because I simply couldn't stand the narrator/protagonist.   I am totally ok with drug addicts and their issues, but you have to be a pretty interesting drug addict to keep my attention, and this one was not.  It's interesting in that this is one of the first depictions of rural opiate addiction, which is a huge issue- even at the highest levels of national politics, but that doesn't make this a fun book.