On the Rocks

Sandra Chick won the Other Award for her first novel, Push Me, Pull Me about sexual abuse. On the Rocks tackles the subject of alcoholism with equal directness. 15-year-old Jinny is trying to hold together her disintegrating family. Her mother's alcoholism, her father's departure to live with someone else and her unmarried sister Kate's suspected pregnancy threaten to overwhelm her. There are no heroics here, just a sharp documentation of the day-to-day pressures and frustrations of Jinny's very dysfunctional family life. There is no happy ending. This is not an easy read since Chick offers neither solutions nor characters whom the reader can unequivocally love or hate. However, it is this authorial integrity which gives the book its stature - older readers of both sexes should have access to it.