Friends of the Shoreline Library and the Shoreline Historical Museum present A House on Stilts

Saturday January 25, 2020 at 2:00pm 

Shoreline Library 345 NE 175th St

Author Paula Becker will present her powerful memoir, A House on Stilts: Mothering in the Age of Opioid Addiction (University of Iowa Press, 2019) 

Co-Sponsored by the Friends of the Shoreline Library and the Shoreline Historical Museum

A House on Stilts tells the story of one woman's struggle to reclaim wholeness while mothering a son addicted to opioids. 

Paula Becker's son Hunter was raised in a safe nurturing home by his writer/historian mom and his physician father. He was a bright curious child. And yet, addiction found him. 

More than 2.5 million Americans are addicted to opioids, some half-million of these to heroin. For many of them -- for Hunter -- their drug addiction leads to lives of demoralization, homelessness, and constant peril. 

For parents -- for Paula -- a child's addiction upends family life, catapulting them onto a path no longer prescribed by Dr. Spock, but by Dante's Inferno. This intensely personal account of trauma and survival offers a timely exploration of a family forced to grapple with America's opioid crisis.

The opioid crisis is now a part of our local and national history, and we will be dealing with the memories and repercussions of it for a long time.

Thanks to Elliot Bay Books, copies will be available for purchase at the presentation, and the author will be available to sign them.