Susan Reinhardt, Author
Susan Reinhardt’s novel The Beautiful Misfits, the story of a mother whose son has become addicted to opioids, benefits from personal experience and a lot of research. Years ago, Reinhardt was prescribed benzodiazepines for panic attacks. “While I never took more than prescribed, I wanted off the pills and entered an in-patient treatment facility,” she says. “I was appalled by the methods used in treatment centers, how punitive the programs can be, how patients are often managed by staff, and so I set out to research addiction and the best way to tackle it.” She began the novel, which is set in Asheville, in 2015. “Great people, young and old, are struggling with addictions, including a close family member of mine who finally got clean,” Reinhardt says. “I went to several funerals of young people with sparkling futures ahead of them, but dead of an overdose from one bad, fentanyl-laced hit.”
Despite the subject matter, Reinhardt manages to keep the novel from being depressing. “By highlighting a new way to treat addiction and having uplifting, unique and quirky characters, my readers get a break from the heaviness,” she says. “My humor and the subplots of the novel are like a pressure-relief valve and give readers that moment of laughter and time to catch a breath.”
The Beautiful Misfits, March 2023, fiction, paperback, $18.95, by Susan Reinhardt, and published by Regal House Publishing, Raleigh, NC. Learn more at SusanReinhardt.com.
