Dusk, Night, Dawn

I got sober in the darkest summer of my life, more than half my lifetime ago. I woke up sick on an already hot morning in my minuscule houseboat in Sausalito with gulls and pelicans taking off and landing outside my window and a clear view of Angel Island. I wanted to die. My best idea was a cool refreshing beer, to get all the flies going in one direction, as my late friend Jack once put it. I do not know what possessed me to call him that day, but I did, and he came over, we talked for a few hours about our alcoholism, and somehow I haven't had a drink since.




My body felt better after a week of sobriety, but it took a long time for my soul to be restored. First I needed to learn to pay bills, take care of my teeth, dispose of a shoe box filled with sedatives and speed, clean up the moral and financial wreckage of my past.




Defeat has been, for so many of us, the portal to soul.




I have a friend whose daughter accidentally killed a man a few years ago, and then tried to run. Ali was driving home drunk on New Year's Eve and hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk. I could have easily run over someone, too. I ran over a dog or a cat one night forty years ago, on the way to the only bar in the hippie town where I lived, but I did not have the courage to stop the car. Maybe it was a raccoon. At any rate, I drove on, electrified with fear and guilt. I was twenty-four at the time, almost ten years younger than Ali when she killed the man. My dad was dying of brain cancer in our tiny cabin up on the Mesa, I had just sold my first book, and in terror, I couldn't do any better than to speed on. Ali sped on, but a witness got her license plate.




I had been on the same road a few times already earlier that day forty years ago, to teach a tennis lesson and clean a house. The road was curvy, above the beach, lined with eucalyptus and nasturtiums, a constant interplay of light and shade, and teasing

Anne Lamott is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Almost Everything; Hallelujah Anyway; Small Victories; Stitches; Help, Thanks, Wow; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; and Traveling Mercies, as well as several novels. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.

"Dusk Night Dawn delivers prose that satisfices literary as well as spiritual tastes." The Washington Post

"She is brilliant. Her writing makes me weep." Hoda Kotb, Today Show

"In difficult times, is there a more soothing voice than Lamott s? Her latest book on the trickiness of faith and hope is chock-full of her trademark wit, at once self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. And this is her first book since getting married in 2019, so those honest insights about choosing love amid anxiety are sure to shine even brighter." Bookpage

"Lamott s many fans will enjoy this ode to relishing small things."  Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
 
"A message of reason and hope we all need to hear."  Booklist, STARRED Review

"By turns wise, funny, tragic, mystical, visionary, and imaginative, Lamott s latest book will appeal to a wide range of readers who have previously enjoyed her relatable writing. Readers new to Lamott are opening themselves to a real treat, as her abilities as a storyteller are in full form." Library Journal

In this collection of short, incredibly timely essays, Lamott attempts to answer the tough questions that many of us grapple with Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move toward places of light and hope. Pure Wow

[Anne Lamott] grows ever more glorious as a writer. As in her previous work, Dusk, Night, Dawn shimmers with humor and beauty How could you resist learning from this woman? Spirituality & Health