Margaret M. Manchester Writes

The severity of the opioid crisis in America really hit home for me when Bernard and I were driving cross-country in September 2024. We stopped at a rest area in rural Ohio. When I entered the restroom, the following sign caught my attention:

I’d been reading the headlines and watched the stories on the local and national news for years, but for some reason, it was in this moment that the magnitude of the crisis really came home.

Then my brother received a phone call from the Medical Examiner’s Office in Chicago. Our estranged niece, who’d struggled with addiction for years, had died of an overdose. It was winter, and she’d been living in a tent in Chicago. Her death hit us hard. It reminded me that we were like countless other families, trying to understand her life and make sense of her death.

We’d witnessed first-hand the impact of her years-long addiction on her family. It had destroyed not only my niece’s life, but that of my sister and brother-in-law.

That phone call inspired me to begin writing my forthcoming novel, The Truths We Carry. It’s set in a fictitious community in Rhode Island. But the deaths from opioids are very real.

In 2025, 219 people died of an accidental drug overdose in Rhode Island. Opioids were involved in 73% of all overdose deaths, with fentanyl contributing to 57%.(PreventOverdoseRI).

Almost everyone I know has experienced, or known someone who has experienced, the effects of addiction. Everyone has their own story.

I wrote The Truths We Carry from a place of quiet attention—to the truths people live with long after headlines fade, and to the weight of knowing that does not always lead to resolution.

The novel will be released on October 1, 2026.

Thanks for tuning in.

With all best wishes,

Margaret