The Sconi

Maggie Ginsberg, Madison Magazine’s senior editor, is hoping readers will take her new “Still True” novel to heart.

The book tells the story of a family and some of its secret battles, including a struggle with alcohol, in a fictional, rural Wisconsin town.

Ginsberg recently appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio where she said she believes she would have quit drinking sooner than she did in 2010 if she was able to see herself facing her struggles in literature or on TV.

“I didn’t relate,” she told WPR. “I didn’t think that there were other young married moms — with jobs, a car, and friends — who appeared to be doing just fine, but were waking up every morning saying, 'OK, today is the day I’m going to quit drinking,' and then going to bed every night hating myself for this broken promise that only I knew I’d made.”

Protagonist Lib Hanson is a woman who abandoned her son as an infant, only to see him appear on her front steps in a small Wisconsin town 40 years later. In the beginning, Ginsberg said she didn’t intend for the main character to have issues with alcohol, but over time it almost seemed natural.

"It’s just the air we breathe," she said. "If you have only ever lived in Wisconsin, you don’t even know it."

According to Wisconsin Policy Forum, 2020 saw the largest year-to-year increase in alcohol-induced deaths in more than two decades. A 2019 report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Population Health Institute found the state’s rate of binge drinking to be higher than the United States average overall. Several Wisconsin cities are often featured on the “drunkest” in the U.S., according to WPR.

Ginsberg, a native of Wisconsin, admits the state’s drinking culture made it nearly impossible to stop drinking. She listed family functions, fundraisers, funerals, and weddings as events that were centered around alcohol.

"It’s just the air we breathe," she said. "If you have only ever lived in Wisconsin, you don’t even know it."