DAY 73: June 2, 2020

The Queen of Everything

by Sonya Braverman

“I was ten years old and two sheets to the wind,” writes the author of this debut memoir. A child who loved whiskey sours led to an alcohol addiction with an unremitting stranglehold on her life, a grip that persisted for decades, shadowing the joys and exacerbating the tragedies of her turbulent life. While leading the reader on her journey of self-discovery and healing, the author describes the soul-crushing and relationship-destroying power of addiction, depression and family dysfunction with raw emotion and spirited humor. In her dramatic struggle towards recovery, the author recounts years of her own inadequate parenting, a broken marriage, and coping with her beloved second husband’s battle with psychosis and Alzheimer’s Disease. With his help, a Holocaust survivor, she is finally able to free herself from the demons of her past. The Queen of Everything: A Memoir is an uncensored and fearlessly written chronicle of a world shaped by alcohol, depression, impaired relationships, and a family riddled with mental illness. With that gut-wrenching odyssey behind her, the author sums up her success at letting go in the final sentence of the book: “In one sense, the past is behind me; in another, it’s right where it’s always been — it’s just that the view from where I’m sitting now is much different.”As one critic states, “The author has the extraordinary ability to make the reader experience whatever she feels. Her story is shocking, tender, true, and often humorous. You won’t be able to put it down.”