“Shikker is a goy” — drunk­ards (and addicts of all kinds) are not Jews. The reli­gious and sec­u­lar Jews liv­ing in Sara Katz’s neigh­bor­hood of Williams­burg, Brook­lyn kept this Yid­dish folk say­ing alive. But Sara knew it wasn’t true not for her sec­u­lar Jew­ish fam­i­ly which, with the best inten­tions, made one poor deci­sion after anoth­er attempt­ing to save her father from hero­in addic­tion. So Sara watched her father suf­fer in secret. The nov­el tells Sara’s sto­ry as the old­est child in the fam­i­ly. It is based on a true sto­ry, but some sto­ries are too painful to write as mem­oir. Sara strug­gles to love her father, a kosher butch­er from an immi­grant fam­i­ly. Despite his lov­ing sides she also fears him. She chal­lenges her moth­er’s sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion ten­den­cies to hide her father’s addic­tion and her grand­moth­er’s denial of her son’s ​“sins.” Dri­ven to shed unwar­rant­ed shame, Sara dis­cov­ers the untold tale of Jew­ish youth and drug cul­ture in the Depres­sion years, and author Sharon Led­er learns how to help today’s fam­i­lies with addic­tion problems.