Celebrities may be able to dash off to rehab whenever they’ve stepped into trouble but an everyday Jane isn’t that lucky—or pampered. Sometimes choices or circumstances thrust her into a pile of problems, and she finds herself at a turning point: she can either use the pile to fertilize all that comes next or go through life never quite getting the stink off. And thirty-nine-year-old Stephanie McCarthy has just such an experience.
Recovering From Life is the story of Stephanie’s rollicking travails as she navigates her way through the heap of troubles left in the wake of her husband’s disappearance. Her latest broken pecker-picker choice, thirty-year-old Kenny McCarthy is M.I.A., and Steph soon learns that he’s rolling down the drug gutter again. This news catapults her into unknown territory—and into a search for her own life. Left with no financial resources, Steph elicits the help of her best friend, moves out of her marriage home, files for divorce, gets fired from her job, starts dating, and sees the truth of her husband’s life during a misguided adventure into the crack ghetto—all without laying eyes on her errant spouse.
As the months go by, Stephanie takes giant steps forward and then back as she learns to confront reality and take care of herself, emotionally and financially. When nearly a year has passed, Steph’s busy nursing heartbreak brought on by yet another man, Mr. Meant To Be, when she’s offered the business opportunity of a lifetime. This proposal could solve her financial woes along with myriad other problems while propelling her into the life she wants. But her ex-husband resurfaces just as Mr. Meant To Be breaks her heart once more, and Steph has to ask herself a question: Has she finally learned to see “what is” not “what she wants it to be”?
And has she learned to do whatever it takes to fend for herself and get the life she deserves?
Spirited, bumbling, and brave, Stephanie asks for help from a couple unlikely, wily characters to get her answers. And taking the biggest risk yet, she makes one final step forward.
