Next Step by Jean Swallow

Next Step

Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery

Jean Swallow

Ten years after the publication of Out From Under, her widely loved and groundbreaking book about lesbians and recovery, Jean Swallow takes a new look at long-term recovery in lesbian communities. Here are heartbreaking stories, fine writing, and raw courage. ‘If you want to know where we’ve been for the last ten years,’ writes Swallow, ‘take a look: we went away and came back whole. These are our stories.’

Library Journal

Similar to Swallow’s first collection of articles on recovery, Out from Under: Sober Dykes and Our Friends (Spinsters, 1983), The Next Step compiles over 30 accounts of how lesbians achieve ‘double-digit’ sobriety (ten or more years). Mostly comprising personal essays, plus a few poems, a song, and a couple of question-and-answer interviews, the book demonstrates the difficulty many lesbians have in achieving long-term recovery from substance abuse, especially when coupled with incest and other sexually related trauma. While the stories of others are often helpful in such circumstances, this book reaches out to a very limited audience and is therefore recommended only for libraries with special collections of substance abuse counseling materials or large gay and lesbian studies collections.-A. Arro Smith, San Marcos P.L., San Marcos, Tex.

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