Love in the Utmost

by Zac Walsh

 

Book Details

“I spent an afternoon in San Francisco that lasted three days…”

In these lively, riveting narratives and poems, Zac Walsh chronicles over a decade in the life of a bipolar alcoholic/addict who loses his religious faith, loses those he loves, loses a job he loves, and almost loses his life before he finds his footing in the world. He writes of the highs and lows, the adventures, the travels, the failed love affairs, the blackouts, the DTs, the DUIs, his despair, and his intellectual and spiritual quest to find his way out of the darkness. While these stories of hitting bottom and recovery and redemption are universal, every story is individual and unique. Wry, erudite, impassioned, you won’t forget this voice. Don’t miss Love in the Utmost. Zac Walsh is a writer to watch.
—Jacqueline Doyle, author of The Missing Girl

Love in the Utmost begins with the narrator’s experience of delirium tremens at the age of 23 and ends with his recovery after rehab for drugs and alcohol at the age of 34. In the space between the reader is taken to Brooklyn, the Black Hills and Cairo, behind the scenes of a major college football rivalry, inside the workforce at Yosemite National Park, invited as an audience member for Banjo Night, and most memorably deep within the psychological journey of a young man seeking wisdom while living inside a body and mind ravaged by the diseases of addiction and bipolar disorder. In the end, Love in the Utmost is a meditation filled with humor and pathos on faith, hope and the greatest of these: love.

 

About the Author

Zac Walsh

Zac Walsh is the author of the short story collection An End of Speaking (Outskirts 2016) and a winner of the Robert V. Williams Prize for Fiction. He is the former Editor at Large of Arroyo Literary Review and his work is published in numerous literary magazines and small presses, including Cimarron Review, Alligator Juniper, The Platte Valley Review and the anthologies Blood on the Floor: How Writers Survive Rejection (Cairn Press 2014) and Small Batch: An Anthology of Bourbon Poetry (Two of Cups Press 2013). He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is pursuing a doctorate in Psychology, specializing in Addiction and Recovery.

Also by Zac Walsh

An End of Speaking