High school was child's play for Arthur Wilberforce Cardel. But now the valedictorian is back home after his first term at Queens, and something is terribly wrong. Once perceived as destined for great things, he's now inexplicably sullen. His parents are frantic. Why won't he talk to them? What is he hiding? In desperation they turn to Punanai House for answers. But the rough-and-tumble world of addiction treatment is not what they expect. Counsellors dressed like gangsters speak with a bewildering confidence-but is what they say bluster or the truth about addiction?Arthur struggles to make sense of a bewildering array of competing and contradictory advice, but none of it helps him deal with the primal urges that are driving him. He catches a break when he reconnects with a young woman from high school who suggests a novel solution.That speck of fire in Rachael's eyes was back again. "I want to do a film about this...TV is full of desperate addicts and sobbing relatives...The...

At thirty-five, Channing Hart was starting to reap the rewards of hard work and sound investing. He revelled in sitting around the big table at Clancy's Tavern. Talk radio without the microphones. The last place you could mouth off without being scolded. Weekends revolved around matching wits and trading barbs over drinks on Friday night and then reassembling for steak and eggs on Saturday morning before putting a few bets down. Hart gloried in taking on the experts and calling them out on their nonsense — until he woke up bruised and hungover in a police holding cell. "I asked a policeman for some water and he gave me a Dixie cup. I asked for another and he told me to shut up. So I ask him, 'When do I get out? Why am I here?' I was hoping for a smart answer, but this guy looked grim. He said, 'Don't you remember?'" The life flowed out of Hart like air out of a balloon. "I don't think there's a question I hate more than that one. 'Buddy,' he said, 'you killed a lady. The...