I’m Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Recklessness, Rehab, and Renegade Mothering

Renegade Mothering blog creator Hanchett offers a startling account of her struggles with alcohol and drug addiction in this raw and riveting memoir. Pregnant at 21, Hanchett married the father of her child, a 19-year-old slaughterhouse worker, and the two settled into his parents’ ranch outside Davis, Calif. Hanchett, raised (for a time) as a Mormon, didn’t do well with the church’s rules and regulations; she was bored with life as a stay-at-home mother and suffered from postpartum depression. She couldn’t shake her alcohol problem, despite seeking help, and she and her husband eventually became addicted to cocaine. Hanchett intersperses her account of these dark times with humor, calling out “Type II” moms who drink kale smoothies out of mason jars, or “Type III” PTA moms, around whom she can’t “drop the F-bomb.”After settling her kids with her divorced mother, the author briefly left her partner and moved into a trailer with another addict, eventually winding up in the hospital following a near-fatal overdose. Relentlessly battling her addiction, the author called on her love of family, as well as the sage advice of an “ex–gutter drunk” she serendipitously encountered outside a meeting hall. Readers will cheer Hanchett toward her triumphant recovery. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (May)