Breaking Through takes you into the life of an alcoholic with unforgiving detail. It leads you down the tortured path that brought Allan McDougall to the brink of suicide by alcohol and back from that hell into the light of a productive life again. Framed by the bawdy, brutal culture of hard rock miners in Northern Ontario, Canada, this is the memoir of a hard life, yet one that, more than 20 years after Allan's critical moment on the brink, continues to be fully redeemed. "My intention", says Allan "is never to see through people but to see people through. This book is a dream I have carried with me for twenty-four years." He lives these words daily as head of the United Steelworkers Union's Emergency Response Team, reaching out as a crisis counselor to the families of workers killed on the job. Every day for 22 years I went thousands of feet under the ground and fought Mother Earth in sweltering heat for her mineral wealth. But, however far inside the earth I went, the riches I discovered when I went deep within myself, the 18 inches from my head to my heart, have proven much more valuable. Those 18 inches were the hardest distance I have ever travelled, yet, after more than twenty years, I am still mining that vein, and I am convinced that it is a bottomless source of personal riches. Many is the book we can't put down, but rare is the story we take with us. Breaking Through, Discovering the Riches Within is such a story.
