Shift Happens

I received an ARC from BooksGoSocial through NetGalley for an honest review. At 26 Margot was put into a locked facility for the insane and when she got out she left home and became a truck driver. With the struggles she went through because she had Bipolar 1 and was an alcoholic, she never gave up because she had decided she was going to live, no matter what.
She eventually left the road and went home. After all her struggles, she met Hal and they married and had 2 children. She eventually found a doctor and was put on the right medicine and she could think clearly. When her son was in college and her daughter was in high school, she got drunk after 25 years of being sober. Her daughter had brought her boyfriend home and the disgust her daughter had for her reminded her of her and her mother.
She writes her story to share with others. One part that really got to me was she was glad she grew up in the '60s rather than the '30s because the outcome would have been so different, which is true. As she ends the book she celebrates the woman Margot has grown to be but mourns the 50 years of missed opportunities. Everything she went through brought her to where she is today.
With everything she went through she never gave up, determined to live her life, keep moving on, no matter how many times she was knocked down, and now she has written this book for others to read and help them understand what they might be going through.

There are aspects of this book which will break your heart despite the conclusion being one of positivity and hope. The sense of grieving for what might have been was strong for me as I read this fascinating woman’s account of a life spanning vastly different experiences. Reflecting on the period in which this is set, it is clear that picking this story up and putting it down even one decade earlier or later would have led to vastly different results. We have so much yet to learn about mental health and how society could respond when people need help. Shift Happens lays it all out there and demands respect through a clear, strong voice. A great achievement by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
Margot really leads an interesting life. From being in a locked mental facility to landing a job as a long-haul truck driver. The people she met while driving were quite interesting. Her struggles with alcohol and bipolar were told with real honesty.

Margot Genger's honest, unusual, and heartbreaking memoir of her time as a long-haul delivery truck driver tackles racism, sexism, mental health, bipolar disorder, depression family drama, culture shock, annoying coworkers, alcoholism, classism, and so much more in only a couple hundred pages.

Following what she refers to as a psychotic break after the dissolution of her second marriage (well, almost marriage), Genger made the surprising choice to sign up for truck driving classes and to pursue a job as a long-haul truck driver, delivering all kinds of goods all across the country with an eclectic series of partners who make her life alternately a bit easier and so much more difficult.

I always love a book that can make a topic I had no real interest in something completely fascinating, and Genger certainly accomplished that with this memoir! I knew nothing about truck driving, let alone women drivers, let alone in the late 1970s, but I was wholly engrossed, and now I'm semi-literate in truck infrastructure and have a much greater understanding of how the things I purchase--from food to clothes to technological devices--end up in the places where I shop.

Genger is a strong storyteller, and I really enjoyed the tidbits she shared about each of her partners, the little anecdotes that revealed so much about her experience with each of these men (and one woman) who shared her life on the road. However, there were a few moments when the writing felt a bit choppy, new stories and characters entering and exiting the overall arc too quickly for me to follow. The first example of this was early in the memoir, Genger's recollections of her time in the mental hospital where she was restrained following her breakdown. Impressively written to represent the chaotic thought processes she was experiencing, I think this section came just a bit too early for me to fully process and appreciate what was going on, and I was more focused on worrying that the rest of the memoir would be written so haphazardly than on the details she was sharing and the skill it took to dramatize the reading experience in that way. The second example is Genger's relationship with Hal. I wish we had more insight into how their relationship developed. Instead, we were introduced to Hal as the annoying know-it-all friend of her brother, and then suddenly they were in love. It seems like a sweet story, and I would have been interested in reading more about his redemption and her attraction.

this was a really cute and adorable book! i loved getitng to read this one early and i thinak netgalley for that grand opportunity!!!!!!