A Clean Heart: A Novel

Reviews:
“John Rosengren is the Minneapolis-based author of nine books, most recently A Clean Heart, a novel centered on the staff and patients of an adolescent drug treatment center inspired, in part, by Minnesota’s pioneering St. Mary’s.  At a time of increased concern about drug and alcohol abuse ― a June CDC study found 13 percent of respondents had started or increased substance use to cope with the pandemic ― Rosengren shares his personal experience with addiction, recovery, and thirty-nine years of sobriety.”
―Minneapolis Star Tribune

“It was like reading one of my favorite Dean Koontz books, only the evil in this book was the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction.  And it has a happy(ish) ending that I’m sure Koontz would love. I give this book FIVE STARS.”
―Jeannie Rabb Marshal in Keys to Recovery newspaper

“Set in 1991 in the early days of chemical dependency treatment, John Rosengren’s A Clean Heart follows the daily routine of Carter, a young counselor at a teen treatment facility.  The book, which switches back and forth from Carter’s troubled childhood to present day, provides a wealth of details and insight into the daily life and struggles of both staff and residents at a typical treatment center of the time.  [This is] a novel that will strike a chord with readers wrestling with substance abuse, the Catholic faith, or family trauma.”
―Alison McGhee, author of Shadow Baby and Never Coming Back

“With echoes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rosengren writes with great empathy for the misfits and outsiders of Six West (whose halls are stalked by the unforgettable Sister X).  A Clean Heart grapples with life’s most difficult puzzles: how we navigate the tangled bonds of family, and how we save ourselves, ultimately, by becoming vulnerable.  A redemptive and affecting novel.”
–Will McGrath, author of Everything Lost Is Found Again

“A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject.  I enjoyed this book.”
–Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist

“In his powerful new book, A Clean Heart, John Rosengren reminds us that the journey of body and soul is best taken with another, or others, that somehow tie their healing to our own.  Set in a rehab center for teens, each level of recovery ― or descent ― is housed in a character. Whether client or employee, they are recognizable, flawed, at times hilarious and lovable in their struggles.  This is a book of lessons and offered insights, but never at the expense of a well-told and gripping story.”
―Kevin Kling, author of The Dog Says How and Holiday Inn

“In A Clean Heart, John Rosengren has created a wonderfully empathetic protagonist Carter and a wonderfully complicated situation.  After seven years in AA, Carter finds himself being tested both by a new patient at the rehabilitation unit where he works and by his boss, the charismatic Sister Xavier.  The result is a gripping and suspenseful novel about the dangerous art of helping.”
―Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

“Rosengren’s A Clean Heart thrums with vibrant characters yearning to do the right thing, often at great personal cost to themselves.  Witty and totally absorbing, here is a novel about helping those snared by drugs and alcohol see that they, too, are worthy of love.  Along the way, the characters learn that painful memories and secrets are a type of drug in their own right ― that the past is just as mind altering and addictive as anything found in a syringe or shot glass.  Both heart-breaking and heart-lifting, this is a narrative about coming clean that will haunt the imagination long after the last page has been read.  Spellbinding, mesmerizing, and deeply human, this is fiction about the toxins and tonics that beat in all of our hearts.”
―Patrick Hicks, author of The Commandant of Lubizec and Library of the Mind

Author:

John Rosengren, a full-time freelance writer for the past 30 years, was recently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and has won more than a dozen writing awards. He has published eight previous books, including Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes, the definitive biography of the first Jew inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, and Blades of Glory: The True Story of a Young Team Bred to Win, which chronicles a season spent with a high school hockey powerhouse (Minnesota’s Friday Night Lights). His articles have appeared in more than 100 publications, such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated and Utne Reader.

Rosengren earned his master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University, where he studied with Saul Bellow and Derek Walcott.