Halfway House: A Story

Sitting in his coat closet one morning with the muzzle of a 12-gauge shotgun in his mouth and his thumb on the trigger, the anonymous narrator of this story finally hits bottom. A telephone call intervenes, and three days later he moves into a halfway house in a neighborhood full of prostitutes and drug dealers, where, one day at a time, he begins a long road to recovery from alcoholism and addiction.

In a prose narrative that crackles with heartbreaking despair and ultimately hope, J. Durbin’s narrator finds relief from his addiction to the bottle and a kind of faith in life that allows him to offer his hand to others reaching out for help.