The Last Barstool (Paperback)

The Last Barstool: A Novel of Addiction, Guilt, and Grace

He poured for everyone in town. Then he had to learn to sit down.

For twenty years, Danny Mercer was the steadiest man in Calder Falls, New Hampshire — the bartender at The Brass Rail who remembered every order, every name, every grandchild. He also drank every shift, in sips and tastes and toasts nobody counted, until one rainy October night he crossed the center line on the river road and hit Tom Whelan head-on.

Tom lived. That word — lived — becomes the foundation of Danny's new life: a suspended sentence, three years of probation, a revoked license, and a court order to attend meetings in the church basement directly across the street from his old bar. Every night, Danny walks past the neon sign to get to his recovery. Every night, he keeps walking.

Told in Danny's plain, unsparing voice — with chapters from Tom's perspective as he learns to walk again and decides what to do with his anger — The Last Barstool follows the whole long work: a gruff sponsor and a legal pad, a coffee urn he learns to tend instead of a bar, restitution paid on the first of the month for years, the amends he owes his mother, his boss, his oldest friend — and the one he owes Tom most of all, who is angry, and grieving, and not ready to forgive.

Honest about addiction without ever glamorizing it. Honest about grace without ever cheapening it. This is a novel about consequences that don't disappear — and a life that gets built anyway, one Tuesday at a time.

For anyone in recovery, anyone who loves someone in recovery, and anyone who believes the walk across the street can change a man.

Also available as an ebook: https://payhip.com/b/QFnWh