'A writer with a profound comprehension of emotional destruction, loss and redemption' Sunday Times A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn't seen in forty-nine years. A man arrives at a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania hotel to introduce his estranged father to his newborn daughter and finds him collapsed on the floor of the lobby. A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past. These seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century-old secrets begin to surface over the course of one fateful day...

Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, representing a growing list of writers. He had a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.
What is it that leads an exceptional young mind to want to disappear? Clegg makes stunningly clear the attraction of the drug that had him in its thrall, capturing in scene after scene the drama, tension, and paranoiac nightmare of a secret life-and the exhilarating bliss that came again and again until it was eclipsed almost entirely by doom. PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN is an utterly compelling narrative-lyrical, irresistible, harsh, and honest-from which you simply cannot look away.

The goal is ninety--just ninety clean and sober days to loosen the hold of the addiction that caused Bill Clegg to lose everything.
Six weeks out of his most recent rehab, Clegg returns to New York and starts attending two or three meetings each day. It is in these refuges that he befriends essential new allies including Polly, who struggles daily with her own cycle of recovery and relapse, and the seemingly unshakably sober Asa.
At first, the support is not enough: Clegg relapses with only three days left. That's when the battle to reclaim his life gets reignited. As any recovering addict knows, hitting rock bottom is just the beginning.

What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful young literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack-addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and - very nearly - his life? In his utterly compulsive narrative, Bill Clegg leads us through the grimiest back-rooms of Manhattan's underbelly, through scenes of blank-eyed sex and squalor, into the febrile paranoia of a mind gone out of control. Ninety Days begins where Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man ends - and tells the wrenching story of Bill Clegg's battle to reclaim his life. The goal is ninety: just ninety clean and sober days to loosen the hold of the addiction. But as any recovering addict knows, hitting rock bottom is just the beginning. . . Published for the first time in one volume: Bill Clegg's unflinching account of the addiction that nearly ended everything.