Double Helix: A Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, and Jazz in Two Voices

In 1968, Ed was a 39 year-old African-American parolee, heroin addict, and sometimes jazz singer from Watts, California. Diane was a naive 24-year old Jewish girl from the Bronx. People said they had no business being together, and their many troubled years of marriage, divorce, reconciliation, more separation and ultimate bottoming out seemed to prove them right-almost. Double Helix is an intensely evocative and unsentimental story told in alternating narrative voices that follows the turbulent, decades-long journey of two people from different worlds whose lives, continually spiraling around each other like a double helix, are really two intertwined stories.

Double Helix traces Ed’s 40 tumultuous years of drug addiction, four stints in prison, near death overdoses, treatment programs and mental hospitals, relapses, and homelessness. It also describes how Diane’s desire to help a loved one crossed a boundary from healthy support to detrimental enabling, or codependency, that prevented her from holding him accountable, letting go, and living her own life. Each eventually found a path to recovery, bringing new challenges and Ed’s dazzling rise as a nationally renowned jazz singer. Double Helix conveys a compelling message-not only is change possible, but it is never too late to realize your dreams.