My Heart Is a Drunken Compass: A Memoir [Hardcover]

The author of The Boy Kings of Texas (2012) returns with another deeply personal and moving memoir. It begins with two late-night phone calls, several years apart. In one, in March 2007, he learns that his brother has sustained a head injury after a fall; the other, in December 2009, tells him that his ex-fianc?e has driven her car over the side of an overpass. In writing about this traumatic period in his life, Martinez talks candidly and painfully about his own mental collapse, his alcoholism and drug use, and his slow path to recovery. Its not what you might call an entertaining memoirif anything its almost operatically tragicbut Martinez writes so frankly, so eloquently, that we are compelled to keep reading, if for no other reason than to see if this poor guy finds a way to come out the other side of all hes gone through. He does, but it is a hard-won breakthrough.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. . . .Page after page, the captivating Martinez releases a flood of raw emotions in this tender and illuminating memoir.This tragicomic memoir is not just about the complications of family, but also about the power of narrative to heal and make whole. A passionate . . . account of personal redemption.The follow-up to his first book, the Nation Book Award Finalist The Boy Kings of Texas, this work finds Martinez again mining his personal and family life for narrative gold. This time, instead of focusing on his border childhood he turns his attention to his adult life in Seattle, most notably his younger brother Dereks near fatal drunken fall and his ex-fianc?s harrowing car accident that act as catalysts for an exploration of his own personal traumasincluding his alcoholic tendencies and near-suicidal depression. Though Martinezs mischievous nature can still illicit a smile, the self-deprecating humor l£"