If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir
In her first book, Nelson relates the story of her troubled family in a series of interconnected personal essays. Growing up near Philadelphia, Nelson rarely saw her father, who was caught in a cycle of prison, rehab, and relapse due to his acute alcoholism. Nelson also found herself drawn to drugs, spending much of her early life using marijuana with her mom and brother or stealing Ritalin from an acquaintance. Nelson’s little brother, Eric, was diagnosed as bipolar, an internal imbalance that seems to plague the whole family and that they all manage with self-medication. Nelson is desperate for the ability to fix her loved ones’ problems even as she knows she can’t save them—a state of limbo from which she must eventually, painfully, choose to emerge. While essays don’t follow the family chronologically, Nelson uses their order to illuminate her emotional evolution, which will prove reassuring and perhaps instructive to readers interested in overcoming similar hardships. --Amber Peckham