Joanna Kadish’s Flirting With Extinction is a raw and unapologetic mosaic of personal essays and stories that chart a life punctuated by grief, recklessness, resilience, and searching. The book dives headfirst into heavy themes: addiction, motherhood, loss, and the fragile line between survival and surrender. With prose that veers between unfiltered vulnerability and sharp humor, Kadish offers an intimate chronicle of a woman navigating trauma through love, memory, danger, and—sometimes—wild horses.

What struck me most was Kadish’s unflinching voice. She doesn’t tidy up her pain, doesn’t soften her edges. In the preface, she talks about clawing her way back from a state of “perpetual sadness” after losing her sons to the opioid crisis—a tragedy that ripples through many of the essays with a haunting steadiness. In “Anatomy of a Firefighter,” she captures childhood pyromania and sibling chaos in the heat-scorched deserts east of Los Angeles. It’s darkly funny, but the undercurrent of danger—both literal and emotional—never lets you forget the stakes.

Kadish’s writing is pure guts and gravel in “Calamity Jane,” where she recounts a horrifying attempt to break a rodeo bronc as a young girl. The imagery is searing: the smashed teeth, the blood, the betrayal of the body. But what lingers most is her twisted pride in lasting the “full eight seconds” before being flung like a ragdoll. There’s something electric in the way she writes pain. It’s not masochism; it’s a yearning to feel, to prove, to matter. This isn’t just about animals—it’s about people, about relationships, about the wild things in ourselves that won’t be tamed no matter how gently we try.

What I liked most about the chapter Zero Evidence was how it peeled back the layers of human fragility in the face of relentless judgment. Kadish walks the tightrope between raw confession and sharp critique, especially when she recounts the moments after her son’s overdose and the unbearable silence that followed. The way she describes the hospital room, the indifferent fluorescent lights, and the cold detachment of the medical staff—it all made my chest tighten. But it’s the emotional isolation that hit hardest. She’s grieving, furious, helpless, and still somehow worried about how others might view her as a mother. Her honesty cuts deep.

This is not a gentle collection. It won’t hold your hand or let you off the hook. But Flirting With Extinction will speak to anyone who’s lived through pain and come out the other side with scars and stories. It’s for people who can’t stop looking backward even while forging ahead. I’d especially recommend it to those who’ve wrestled with addiction in their families, lovers of memoir that bleeds fiction, and women who’ve ever been called “too much” for wanting to ride the bronc instead of just watching.

Pages: 300 | ASIN : B0DJHCQ5LT