Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Downby Anita Ballard-Jones
ISBN: 978-0-9729455-3-0
Josey was pregnant, struggling to overcome her cocaine addiction, and determined her baby would not be born an addict like her second daughter, Kelly. After three attempts to clean up, Sabur, Josey’s husband continued offering her an endless supply of cocaine to keep her under his control. Finally, Josey ran away and with the help of Sabur’s mother, Sadie, she entered a long term rehabilitation facility and vowed never to return to Sabur. The only problem was Sabur was a powerful and anonymous drug financier and Josey loved him more than she feared him. Did Josey want what Sadie wanted for her and her children? Did she just want Sabur to love her and change their way of life, or did she have a choice?
Dr. Pearson, Josey’s psychologist at the Springwood Rehabilitation Center , had no knowledge of Josey’s husband’s involvement in her repeated relapses. He had Josey seek the underlying cause for her substance abuse by having her return to her early years and relive her past by analyzing her old memories. Josey begins thinking back to her childhood, to when the horrors began; to a time when she and her brothers and sister had to fight most of their young lives for survival while their parents were strung out on heroine and had turned their apartment in a Brooklyn, New York housing project into a junkie’s hangout.
Josey faced many trials in her present life while struggling to overcome her addiction to cocaine. She became stronger each day and most of her strength came from the survival skills she developed in childhood. She tells a gripping story how everyone in her family had fallen down; of how her mother sliced her wrist in a suicide attempt and her six children had to try to save her until help arrived. How she and her baby sister delivered their baby brother on the living room sofa while their mother was high on heroine; then eleven years later they had to bury him after his death from AIDS. Josey tells how she prevented her own rape by a junky that frequented their apartment, and how she had to kill him. Josey pours her heart out telling of her horrific childhood and how drugs and the consequences of the drug culture destroyed her family.
While Josey was still at Springwood Rehab she decided to return to Sabur. She said he had changed and agreed to move the family from New York . He said he was leaving the business and Josey, his mother, their girls and their son would be safe. But before he could pick Josey up rehab he was killed in a suspicious car accident. Josey was devastated, but was left with millions of dollars. Finally, Josey, Sadie and Josey’s sister, Kim and the children moved to the northern suburb’s of New Orleans . Almost a year later Sabur returned. His identity had been surgically altered and his name had been changed. Josey was elated, and although Sadie was happy her son was still alive, she remembered what the real Sabur was like. She told him that she had set a plan in place that would destroy him should he hurt Josey again.
This novel tells the story of ten people who fell down and only seven of them got up again.
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