Hard Love: A California Memoir

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From the author of Hard Knocks: Memoir of a Small Moment, Hard Love is the second of three memoirs and picks up where Hard Knocks leaves his readers. It describes the author’s immaturity as a young Christian living with his wife in California and his continuing struggles with alcoholism. Like Paul’s discussion of his dilemma as a Christian in Romans 7:15,
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
It also follows Lopez’s continuing struggle with depression and his wrestling between his conscience and his flesh, reminiscent of T. S. Elliot’s lament in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
The narrative describes the radical way in which God heals Lopez from alcoholism, which saves his marriage and leads to the beginning of successful academic and professional careers (employment as a federal probation officer, receiving a master’s degree in English from UC Berkeley), the birth of a daughter in Berkeley, and the blessings received through becoming part of a local Baptist church. The memoir covers fourteen years living in California and ends with a flight back east to relocate in Connecticut.