The Chocolate Debacle - Softcover

Winters Schwartz, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936636131 ISBN 13: 9781936636136

Publisher: Goodman Beck Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Six months after her husband dies, fifty-eight-year-old Florence Loughton falls in love. She falls in love the moment that Hector stretches out his tiny little neck and licks at the smooth tan skin of her face. She soon forms an unlikely bond with twenty-six-year-old Trey Barkley, Hector's dog walker. Trey doesn't seem to mind that he walks dogs for a living or that he still lives with his parents, but when his whole world is set on end by a brief chocolate bar encounter, leading to his arrest for a murder he may or may not have committed―threatening his livelihood, his freedom, and the sanity he's worked so hard to maintain―he minds. He minds very much―especially considering that it's the murder of his only real friend: Mrs. Florence Loughton. Detective Seth Wooley is initially confident in his quick arrest of the crazy-ass dog walker. Every clue indicates that Trey Barkley is the murderer. Easy―except Seth just can't seem to shake the fact that sometimes things are just too damn easy. The Chocolate Debacle is a captivating story where two lonely people come together and form an odd friendship that comes to an abrupt and troubling end on the day Flo dies.

About this title

From the Author

Karen Winters Schwartz was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. She wrote her first truly good story at age seven. Her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Schneider, publicly and falsely accused her of plagiarism. She did not write again for forty years.

Educated at The Ohio State University, both Karen and her husband have shared a career in optometry in Central New York's Finger Lakes while raising two daughters together. 

Karen is the president of NAMI Syracuse (National Alliance on Mental Illness), a strong advocate for mental illness awareness, and a sought-after speaker at health association events and conferences across the country. Karen knows firsthand the devastation that mental illness can wreak on a family. She has talked to hundreds of families who have dealt with the frustration of a broken mental health care system. She has experienced the price of stigma and has felt the isolation that ignorance, misunderstanding, and judgment can inflict on everyone involved. She knows how these misconceptions delay and thwart necessary treatment—at its best leading to loss of jobs, productivity, and relationships, at its worst leading to tragedies such as suicide, violence, and mass murder. She has also experienced the joy of the recovery of a loved one, stressing early detection and treatment as the key to this success.

Her critically acclaimed debut novel on mental illness, Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?: A Family’s Journey Through Bipolar Disorder, was released by Goodman Beck Publishing in September 2010. Its widely praised follow-up, Reis’s Pieces: Love, Loss, and Schizophrenia, was released in the spring of 2012, and her third novel, The Chocolate Debacle, was released in the fall of 2014. Her books are not only honest and engaging stories—they are also advocacy tools, educational tools, and a comfort to those dealing directly and indirectly with mental illness.

Through her books Karen opens up discussions about the need for empathy and the impact of the negative stigma associated with these neurobiological brain disorders. Through literature, she educates while entertaining, elicits empathy while telling a great story, and advocates by reaching those who just don’t “get it.”

Review

"The Chocolate Debacle is a superbly crafted suspense novel--but it is also much more than that. As social commentary, it unveils the stigma that affects people with mental illness and their families, as well as the inherent fallibility of our criminal justice system. It explores a deep contradiction of human experience. In the end, we have a murder mystery without a villain, which is quite in keeping with the author's gift in portraying flawed human nature with insight, empathy, and warmth."
--David Kaczynski
ED of KTD Buddhist monastery & brother of Ted Kaczynski, "the Unabomber."

"The Chocolate Debacle combines mystery and compassion in its portrayal of a young man whose mental illness makes him a target of the police in a murder investigation. So rarely do we see persons with acknowledged mental illness as protagonists that it was not until I picked up this book that I realized this to be true. Told in winning prose with a sense of humor that is striking when it hits, this book is a must read for anyone who likes a good yarn and a main character you cannot easily forget."
--Lisa Rojany Buccieri
publisher and editor in chief of New York Journal of Books

"The Chocolate Debacle is more than a mystery novel. Its plot explains schizophrenia and its symptoms, and challenges stereotypes that lead to rushes to judgment. It is a reality that many individuals and families affected by mental illness face."
--Mary Giliberti
executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness

"While reading The Chocolate Debacle I felt like one of the dogs Trey Barkley, the accused killer, walks! The story pulled me along with the sights, smells, clues, and characters, which demanded my immediate and full attention. Much more than a whodunit, the characters are real people dealing with extraordinary, unimaginable and yet commonplace circumstances involving serious mental illness. This book tells a very real story of what happens when mental illness and murder cross paths."
--Xavier Amador
author of the international bestseller I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help!

"Rich, strong characterizations and stream-of-consciousness flashbacks permeate The Chocolate Debacle, an intriguing, psychologically astute mystery by Karen Winters Schwartz (Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?)." -- Shelf Awareness for Readers

About this edition

• Publisher: Goodman Beck Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1936636131
• ISBN 13: 9781936636136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288