The Utter Catastrophe

The Utter Catastrophe by Sandra Hutchison (Book 3 in the Lawson Trilogy) 400 pages

Hutchison has done it again; she has written a book that sweeps the reader into its fictional world!

In the third and final book (much to my dismay) of the Lawson Trilogy, the topics are much, much heavier—the opioid crisis, drug addiction and recovery—yet it is tempered by a romance.

It’s the summer of 2016. Winslow Jennings is now Lawson’s Chief of Police. He and the other chiefs in the nearby small towns are overwhelmed with drug-related deaths. Winslow doesn’t realize it, but the crisis is about to hit home.

Everyone in Lawson has noted that Winslow’s cousin, Dave Cantwell, and Dave’s wife, Peggy, have been acting strange. They seldom leave the house anymore, don’t interact with their old friends or their extended family. It’s been a bad year for them with Dave hurting his back at work. But they still manage to make it work. Or so they thought.

The Cantwell’s have three children: Megan, Mike and Zach. Megan, twenty-one and just home from college, has noticed that her parents were acting stranger than usual, but she shrugged it off as to her being away. When they overdose in a nearby town after making a buy, it is up to Megan to become the adult. Mike is in Afghanistan and Zach is a middle-schooler.

As Megan tries to sort out her parents’ financial affairs and save their farm, there is another problem looming on the horizon. Seems her first, and only so far, love, Noah, is back in Lawson. He has recently been discharged from a rehab center and is home to bury his wife and raise his daughter. But can Noah say clean? Megan still has feelings for him, but it would not be smart to get involved with a drug addict.

At times, “The Utter Catastrophe” was a tough book to read, but Hutchison managed it with compassion. I really liked that Hutchison focused on those left behind to clean up the mess(es) and muddle their way through life instead on the addicts themselves, and how they could not get off that road.

I also like that Winslow and Mary did not take center stage in this chapter, but they were strong supporting characters. The Somali refugee family (whose names I can no longer recall) are also supporting characters who help to frame the story of a small town in big trouble,

“The Utter Catastrophe” is another 5-star read in Julie’s world!