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Winik and her husband, Tony Heubach, met in the debauched atmosphere of Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1983. Each time they ventured back to the city that brought them together, they were a little older, although, perhaps, no wiser. Tony's diagnosis of HIV and subsequent drug dependency, Winik's affairs and her unwitting role as financial aid and abettor to Tony's addiction-these ingredients added to the pressure cooker their relationship had already become, full of spiritual love, devoid of physical intimacy.
Other relationships no less central to Winik's life, including that with her ever-supportive father and her frustrating (and frustrated) in-laws, occupy the margins of her story. Initially having sowed the seeds of youth in an effort to shake off the shackles of her conventional upbringing, Winik shows how she and others eventually have confronted the effects of their lifestyle choices, including AIDS, emotional co-dependency, physical betrayal, and drug addiction. But Winik is the last person to pity herself or others. Her grace, her solace, is in her gift-writing. In this immensely accessible narrative, she does what a good poet should: gives insight into the human condition.
Undaunted, frank, yet deeply compassionate, Winik looks back on her life with no regrets, an attitude in an age of confessional scapegoat-ism that will no doubt endear her to her readers.
Jayne Plymale-Jackson is a freelance writer in Athens, Georgia
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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