Andrea Brunais’ long, award-winning career as a journalist ended a few years ago when she went to work at Virginia Tech, but her writing didn’t stop. Fortunately.
In 2014, she turned out the page-turning fictional “Mercedes Wore Black,” a story about a young “backpack journalist” covering a Florida gubernatorial race. Her newest, which is non-fiction, gets back to her roots with a personal—and often terrifying—story of drug abuse.
Brunais’ “Hillbilly Drug Baby” is yet another scary reminder of how pervasive the opioid crisis is in the United States. Beth Macy’s recent “Dopesick” turned up the volume on opioids with its horror stories, but few are felt more closely than Brunais’ story of the young man she and her husband, Hal Gibson, lived when they took in teenager Jesse-Ray Lewis, a West Virginia addict from an addicted family.
The story is heartfelt, difficult and told with the authority of a prize-winning journalist (Pulitzer Prize finalist at one point). Andrea’s writing is smooth, forceful and fully engaging at every point of the book.
The only distraction is a series of magazine-style sidebars that give a much more journalistic look at drug addiction’s effects. The sidebars interrupt the narrative and are best read separately from the primary narrative, which flows nicely without them.
The book is published by WriteLife Publishing of Christiansburg, an imprint of Boutique of Quality Books, owned by Terri Leidich, a frequent teacher at the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, as is Brunais. The conference is scheduled at Hollins January 25-26, with a backup snow date of February 1-2.
Brunais is one of the growing cadre of writers from our region who are stretching the boundaries of writing in this small corner of the U.S., making it a centerpiece for the profession.
About the Writer:
Dan Smith is an award-winning Roanoke-based writer/author/photographer and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame (Class of 2010). His blog, fromtheeditr.com, is widely read and he has authored seven books, including the novel CLOG! He is founding editor of a Roanoke-based business magazine and a former Virginia Small Business Journalist of the Year (2005).
