Dewdrops

Dewdrops is set in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. The main character is Ray, a former alcoholic, cocaine addict, and ex-con drug smuggler, now a charismatic addiction counselor who is himself in existential crisis as he struggles every day with his patients’ suffering. He is desperately searching for “the answer” to life’s so often irrational pain and injustices and his failure to find it is threatening his sobriety. The steadier Peter, the head of the treatment center, knows Ray is in trouble and is trying to right his “best counselor’s” dangerously listing ship.

The other characters are introduced within a group therapy setting in which their life histories, secrets, and vulnerabilities are exposed.  Angel, a rock-star as wild and out of control as she is gorgeous, long ago perceived the falseness of the world but sees no way out other than to become its ruling queen. She has concocted a superstar persona, so ironclad and stiflingly all-embracing it is choking he to death. Duke, a grizzled old “man’s man” with all the prejudices and follies of the worst of his generation and “red-neck” culture and ideology who seems beyond change. Alex, a young lawyer, trying to cope with an especially dire consequence of his addiction.  Paula, stunted and trapped, a victim of incestuous molestation. Maggie, wounded, man-hating, suicidal. Billy and Joey, the first a lost boy, the second a lost boy now a lost man.

Each character is in ultimate crisis, at the crossroads: in one direction, if not actual death, the living death of addiction; in the other direction, the possibility of a new life. The choice before each of them: continue to hug tight the demons that are devouring them or move toward self-disclosure, self-knowledge, and a willingness to surrender and change what they can and accept what they cannot change.