Mary Sojourner | Going Through Ghosts & She Bets Her Life | NPR commentator presents her second novel and memoir

NPR commentator Mary Sojourner presents her second novel, Going Through Ghosts, and her memoir, She Bets Her Life: A True Story of Gambling Addiction. In Going Through Ghosts, Maggie Foltz is a fifty-five-year-old cocktail waitress in a rundown casino in the southern Nevada Mojave Desert, spending her days serving drinks to lonely old folks playing the slot machines and her nights trying to escape her bitter past. When she befriends Sarah, a young Native American woman who is hired to cook in the casino coffee shop, her life begins to change. Maggie finds herself falling in love with a memory-haunted Vietnam veteran and warily begins to hope that together they can find peace. Then Sarah is mysteriously murdered, and Sarah's ghost enlists Maggie to accompany her on a quest for the wisdom that she needs in order to move into the next world. In She Bets Her Life, Sojourner takes an objective and deeply personal look at the psychological and physiological impact of gambling addiction on women. Having lived it, Sojourner presents first-hand accounts, research, and resources to help steer women with gambling addictions (and their loved ones) toward help and healing.