Radical Acceptance

One poor decision can tank everything. Middle-aged Laurel Peterson has struggled for a lifetime to overcome her damaging childhood. She's managing quite well as a successful graphic artist in Scottsdale, Arizona, when life comes crashing down. She decides to indulge in just one drink to take the edge off, but a third DUI rips away everything she's worked to build. She finds herself in the infamous Tent City jail in the scorching Arizona desert, pending a subsequent prison sentence. Laurel, determined to fight her demons, scrabbles to make real changes in her life and become sober once and for all. But, can she... with her sister's murder, an ungrateful mother battling Parkinson's Disease, and the stakes ratcheting upward when she's contacted by a son she abandoned nineteen years before?

Bonnie E. Carlson's short fiction has been published in literary magazines such as The Normal School, Broadkill Review, Foliate Oak, Down in the Dirt, Across the Margin, and Blue Lake Review. Now she lives with her husband, dog and too many cats in Scottsdale, AZ and writes fiction and hikes to her heart's content in the beautiful Sonoran Desert.