Into the Fire

Terri Blackstock wrote Intervention with firsthand knowledge of the agony of living with an addict. It’s a form of hell on earth. In Intervention the pain, the rage, the sorrow, the sense of absolute loss and the inability to do anything to make things change for the better writhes on each page. The tension is at full tilt every step of the way, and I must commend Terri for capturing the intensity, frustration, brokenness, and the crippling need to make decisions with little or no information.

Barbara Covington’s daughter Emily is only 18 years old, but she’s a professional drug abuser. Addicted to a few different drugs of choice, she blames her mother and God for the pain of losing her dad to cancer. Her suffering came wrapped in the angst and sorrow of a teenager with few coping skills and the false evaluation of her mother’s sense of loss. She failed to see how her mom strained to hold herself together in order to show strength in their family’s crumbling world after the death of this father and husband.

Already busted for a DUI and becoming an accomplished thief, Emily associates with “friends” who jeer at the phrase “hitting bottom” and know how to work the rehab system.

Barbara plans her last hope for her daughter and stages an intervention through an agency she prays will hold the key to her daughter’s lasting healing and sobriety. Knowing the substantial risk of investing the huge sum of money and having Emily refuse to accompany the woman back to treatment, Barbara feels she has no options left. Her 14 year old son hopes this time his sister who has abandoned their previous closeness following their dad’s death will agree to go and finally get well.

After throwing a hateful and resentful fit, Emily decides to accompany the woman to a place outside of Atlanta, and they leave the airport. Emily carries only $10 and no cell phone. Barbara receives one phone call via the interventionist’s cell, and then hears no more from either of them. She panics when she can’t get in touch with them and soon learns the interventionist has been murdered in her car at the airport with video of Emily fleeing the vehicle, assumed to be the murderer, and catching a ride in a black Infiniti.

Barbara and her son Lance fly to Atlanta, talk to police, insist Emily is not a murderer, and set out on their own to find her. Detective Kent Harlan can’t decide whether to admire the woman or to be angry with her for meddling in their investigation and putting herself in danger.

I found one too-convenient flaw in the novel toward the end involving an unlocked car door. Although it’s not impossible that it could’ve happened, it’s difficult for me to imagine even in panic mode that this kind of mistake might be made under the circumstances. Other than that, the suspense, the tension, the frustration, and the fear element are well written and believable. Terri wrote from the heart on this one, and it came across 100% authentic.

Compassion with realism combines to make this a touching, intense, hard-fought story about those who love addicts and are determined to see them whole. The faith element is steady and honest. The main character loves the Lord, flounders briefly, but keeps her faith in spite of the odds against her. A worthy read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031025065X

Father, thank you for Terri’s story, for her many novels, her passion for telling tales. This one demonstrates your faithfulness in a special way, and I pray you would bless Terri and her daughter for having the courage to share the experience of “hitting bottom” and having you lift them up. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.