Sometime around 1981—before my parents’ divorce, before my stepdad and Pacifica—I went with my sister to a few Alateen meetings. Alateen is “a fellowship of young Al-Anon members, usually teenagers, ages 12 to 19, whose lives have been affected by someone else's drinking.” It’s based on the 12 steps of AA, and should not be confused with ABBA Teens.
I don’t remember how we landed there. It likely came about from the last of my father’s attempts to get and stay sober before he left us. There was a stay at a hospital and then group family therapy. You read that right. Family therapy but in a group, with other families. Presumably, only people who can’t pay for regular family therapy would subject themselves to this.
My sister and I have different but equally traumatic memories of the session (I think there was only one, but there could have been a few), including being asked why we didn’t want to sit with our parents, public crying, and a facilitator who thought he was Judd Hirsh in Ordinary People.
It was probably that experience or that group that referred my sister and me to Alateen. The meetings took place in the back of a baking supplies shop on Balboa St. in SF. I don’t remember going to this more than two or three times, but I can see the group of us around a table. My quiet sister. The kid across from me, in a color-blocked puffy coat from Penney’s that he never took off. Folding chairs, intense pre-adolescent emotions.
This time in our lives was a brief interlude, and I presume our attendance was curtailed when my mom remarried and we moved to Pacifica. I made a return to Alateen for a short stint in high school after I got my driver’s license, probably around when I took a trip by myself to see my dad in PA where he was living with my grandma.
Again, I don't remember a ton, except when you're a teen in a sleepy suburb like Pacifica, you welcome any excuse to go out on a weeknight and maybe stop at Denny's after where you could buy cigarettes from the machine in the foyer, and, in the 80s, not be questioned if you chose to smoke those cigarettes in your booth while downing black coffee.
There were a couple of girls who went with me, girls I thought were much cooler than me, and we talked about our dads but also about other stuff. We were pretty different, but that commonality gave us an easy shorthand for those smoky Denny's conversations.
When I wrote A Song Called Home, I thought about Lu's older sister, Casey, as one of these cool girls, and imagined a world for her in which she'd find Alateen and have someone to talk to about her dad. Then when Lu was old enough she'd go, too. (On my first tour there I was technically too young, but I went with my older sister and they let me.)
In Kyra, Just for Today, which takes place in the same world as Song but two years later, I had the chance to take the seed I'd planted in Song (not knowing I'd write another book about these characters) and let it blossom.
This is Kyra's story, and she's newly 13. She and Lu and Casey go to weekly meetings that are my fictionalized version of Alateen, where Kyra gets to be the wise old soul because her mom has been in active recovery for years. But then that starts to falter, along with Kyra and Lu's friendship, and, as we say in the business: drama ensues.
It's tricky to write about 12-step stuff. It's got the same inherent trickiness as writing about religion. It's a system of belief based in ritual, liturgy, slogans, and sayings that can feel empty or cliched at the same time they're giving you something to hold onto, some kind of truth.
The uniquely tricky thing about 12-step groups is that they describe themselves as programs of “attraction, not promotion.” In a culture where everything is a brand, everything is an ad placement or an exercise in political or religious conversion, it’s the one thing you’re not really supposed to tout. (And I’ve got my own feelings about the pros and cons of these groups).
So the version of Alateen in my book, which is never called that, is a kind of made-up, nameless support system based on the 12 steps as far as how they’ve been absorbed into general cultural knowledge. I use some of the slogans, some of the language. Kyra and her mom talk about the steps and recovery, hopefully in a way that leaves a lot of room for readers to place themselves.
⭐ Kirkus liked it, anyway! They’ve just given it an early starred review. ⭐
“A middle-grade novel showing how children pay the price of living in families where alcohol is abused. … Authentic and heartbreaking but hopeful.”
It’s out in March, and so is the paperback of A Song Called Home. Pre-orders, as every author feels compelled to say repeatedly, help so much. ⬇️
📚 The This Creative Life book is part of a BookFunnel promo for writing craft books. I haven’t read these others and can’t vouch for them, but you might find some good deals here or you can pick up my book if you haven’t yet!
🔬 A project I’m working on involves some bleak research about systemic abuse. I’ve been reading lawsuits, news reports, personal narratives, and fictional narratives. There are depressing aspects, but there’s also the satisfaction of some measure of justice, no matter how long delayed. Some watches that stood out: Scout’s Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America (truly a masterclass in avoiding responsibility); Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals (terrible title, good series about abuses in the Independent Fundamental Baptist church); and a rewatch of 2020’s Athlete A about the cover-ups in US Gymnastics. Todd Hayne’s May December also fits here in a very different way.
🎙️ If you missed it, what will likely be the final episode of the This Creative Life podcast was released last month. In it, I talked with Ashley C. Ford about the road to writing her bestselling memoir, Somebody’s Daughter. This conversation was exactly how I’d hoped to finish out this incarnation of TCL. Find it here or wherever you get podcasts.
The Inbox Variations is the monthly-ish newsletter of author Sara Zarr. Find out more about Sara and her books at www.sarazarr.com.
I'd never heard of Alateens before. Exciting to hear about your next book and a new project. I'm a big fan of all your titles and the podcast too. But I get it. Podcasts are a huge amount of work!
Obvs, I am very much looking forward to reading this. I have a WIP that flirts with 12-step, not sure yet how it'll come together in the final draft but in the zero/shitty first draft, it features. That said, I have noticed that most media treats 12-step the way you describe. The only exception I can think of is the TV show Mom.