Best-selling author Terri Blackstock was devastated when she discovered her daughter had a severe drug addiction.
Thankfully
Blackstock was able to find help for her daughter—who has since
recovered—but through the process, she learned a lot about addiction and
treatment. With her daughter’s blessing, she wrote about it in her
novel Intervention and its sequel Vicious Cycle.
The
third and final book of the series, Downfall (Zondervan), brings back
characters from both books—including Blackstock’s favorite, Barbara
Covington.
“I
poured so much of myself into her,” she says. “In Downfall things have
settled down and seem to be on the upswing for Barbara and her
family—until someone sets a bomb under her daughter Emily’s car. She
thinks Emily has drifted back into the drug culture and that all the
chaos is beginning again. I’ve felt Barbara’s paranoia and the feeling
that at any minute the other shoe is going to drop.
“The
biggest misconception people have about addiction is that it only
happens to people from dysfunctional, unbelieving homes. The reality is
that it also happens to those of us who’ve raised our kids in Christian
households, who’ve never had alcohol or drugs in our homes, who’ve done
our best to raise up our children in the way they should go. My daughter
never did drugs until she was away at [Christian] college and was an
adult.”
Blackstock
hopes the trilogy shows just how awful addiction can be. But if she
could only convey one thing to readers, it would be that Christ forgives
and redeems. “He gives addicts the power to change and family members
the power to go on. He truly does help us carry our burdens. And
sometimes He uses our suffering in powerful ways that help many others.”