Crystal Lies [Paperback]

A Son’s Addiction. A Mother’s Heartbreak. A Family’s Crisis.

As the wife of a prominent city attorney and the mother of two teenage children on the brink of adulthood, Glennis Harmon lives the kind of successful, high-profile life that many people envy. But when nineteen-year-old Jacob is drawn into substance abuse, Glennis’ “perfect” world shatters like a crystal vase rocked from its once-steady shelf.

Glennis struggles to understand the response of her family as they seek to support Jacob’s recovery. Her husband appears more concerned with protecting his image than with finding help for their troubled son, but Glennis becomes determined to save Jacob no matter what the cost. Stepping into a rescuer role, she unintentionally puts her relationship with her older daughter, Sarah, and her already strained marriage on the line–and a revelation about her husband will push her to the brink of what she can bear.

How far should a mother go to save her child?

A compelling, compassionate, and ultimately hopeful novel about the impact of substance abuse and addiction, Crystal Lies is an intimate portrayal of one mother’s attempt to simultaneously love, trust, and let go.“Raw, real, and provocative, Crystal Lies thrusts us into a world inhabited by more people than we may realize on the surface. This account of one mother’s struggle for the healing of her drug-addicted son speaks to anyone who has ever loved anyone else. Melody Carlson never fails to drag us out of our Christian easychairs and right into the coals of the confusing culture in which we all find ourselves. She never fails to reveal that place of compassion within each of us. Excellent.”
–Lisa Samson, author of The Church Ladies and