Domingo Martinez (National Book Award finalist for his memoir The Boy Kings of Texas) continues his personal story of anxiety, excessive drinking and love shortly after the events at the close of his first book. His ex-fiancée, Steph, is in the hospital, suffering from traumatic brain injury, as she plummeted off a highway embankment after having an epileptic seizure while driving. Stressed out and unable to sleep from the pressure of helping Steph and her family, Martinez starts his tale with the lowest point in his life: when he tried to end it.
"I'd been in another hospital myself, three days earlier, after ripping one of my arms to shreds in a psychotic break at 3:00 a.m., alone in my own bathroom. A combination of Xanax, some SSRI that had kept me awake for four days, and a steady intake of gin--gin to quiet the shouting in my head, gin to thicken my terror to a sludge, gin to drown out the crushing sense of guilt I felt the moment I awoke during those rare times I could actually get about twenty continuous minutes of sleep--gin, which turned the Xanax and the serotonin inhibitors into assassins, and I finally gave up, found an old-fashioned double-sided razor blade and went at my left wrist, working for the one deep cut that would end it, end all of this, in a bathtub, alone in darkest, wettest February, as I sucked down one last Pabst Blue Ribbon for courage, or self-pity."
Martinez then hops around his own timeline, reflecting first on the influence he might have had on his youngest brother's addictions--Derek almost died after drinking too much--and then his relationship with Steph. In their love/hate connection, everything was always a bit skewed and arguing was part of their foreplay. With passion and profound honesty, Martinez holds nothing back as he interweaves his own downward spiral with tales of his Mexican-American family, his interactions with his social circle, his work and his fraught bond with Steph, a combination of events that trigger his suicide attempt.
Leaning on his platonic friend Sarah for support, Martinez struggles to balance his mixed feelings for Steph with the knowledge that their relationship is doomed. He also delves into his own despair at turning 40 with little to show for his life of hard work. It's only when he makes a concerted effort to get his writing published that his life begins to turn around. Fittingly, selling the first chapters of his first book to a literary journal called Epiphany helps Martinez realize that there might be an end to what he calls his "personal inferno." Page after page, the captivating Martinez releases a flood of raw emotions in this tender and illuminating memoir well worth reading. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer
Shelf Talker: When a man reaches the bottom of the barrel of life, he can either stay there or fight his way up; Domingo Martinez is a fighter.