Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery

Maybe redemption is not a place you find, but a system of mapmaking. Sketch a land. Pencil in dragons. Imagine it real, resplendent, and broken under a waxing moon.

Lessons and Carols is a genre—bending memoir that explores the aftershocks of alcoholism and mental illness through a fresh look at the powers of poetry, ritual, and community. As a new parent, West grapples with his own fragmented recovery and grief for the friends he lost to addiction, asking if anyone can really change, or if...