A high school dropout fighting addiction lands in Chicago finance under a former NFL player's wing. Timothy J. Hillegonds asks what he owed the mentor who helped save him, and at what cost.
Readical Key Points
- Starred review from Booklist; Distinguished Favorite, 2026 NYC Big Book Award, according to the publisher
- Part of the University of Nebraska Press American Lives series
- Subjects include addiction and recovery, masculinity, mentorship and power at work. Also addresses manipulation, control and a two-year lawsuit
- Paperback, 170 pages
Hillegonds recounts eight years working for Sean Dempsey, an NFL veteran who became an entrepreneur and gave a young father in active addiction a way into the financial world. In the author's account, the support came bound up with manipulation and control, and getting free took a two-year lawsuit. The book moves between workplace memoir and reflection on masculinity, gratitude and harm.
It is written for readers of recovery memoir and of books about men, work and power, and Hillegonds turns the same scrutiny on himself that he turns on his mentor. The question is not whether Dempsey helped him. It is what that help was worth.
About the Author
Timothy J. Hillegonds's earlier memoir is The Distance Between (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), and his writing has been published in The Guardian, The Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Salon.
Condition: Brand New and Readical Ready.
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