Standby (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9798894278209)

40 year old Beth McDonough lived and breathed tv news.

Ever since she was a little girl, she wanted to be an investigative reporter, like the savvy women she watched on the nightly news growing up in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City. Beth thrived on the adrenaline of breaking a BIG story, holding the corrupt accountable, exposing public demons and covering just about any kind of tragic disaster out there: 9/11, the 35W Bridge collapse, the overdose death of Prince, the confession of monsters like Jacob Wetterling's abductor, Jayme Closs' escape from her kidnapper and the killing of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody along with the months worth of riots and racial reckoning protests that followed nationwide.

Beth worked her way up from a rookie journalist in small towns to becoming a high-profile crime & justice reporter in major cities. She earned a reputation for being tenacious and resourceful, and thriving under the pressure of constant deadlines that are the daily news machine. With every word of the scripts she wrote, Beth strived to be among the best of the best storyteller's in TV news.

But Beth had a dark secret of her own, one she'd tried to keep to herself for years, but couldn't contain it anymore.

She was forced to confront it in the worst way: publicly. Overnight, she went from being a star storyteller to the subject of scandalous news stories. Mugshots replaced her headshots on social media sites, stories about her arrests and criminal charges were all over the radio & tv news in Minneapolis and soon after, national gossip shows and sites. Beth became the news.

She was fired, broke, on the verge of bankruptcy and homelessness. And she only had herself to blame...would she carry this burden of being an alcoholic with her for the rest of her life and wallow in the weight of that. Or, could she summon up the strength to fight for the only life she has, sober up and perhaps one day, be the reason someone else refuses to surrender to addiction.