Madison Reporter

Maggie Ginsberg finds comfort in knowing her new novel gives voice to the voiceless.

“Still True” tells the story of a family and its secrets, including its battles with alcoholism, in a fictional, rural Wisconsin town.

Ginsberg, a senior editor at Madison Magazine, recently appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio where she said she would have taken action to quit drinking a lot sooner than she did in 2010 if she had been able to see herself facing her struggles in literature or on TV.

Maggie Ginsberg's “Still True” tells the story of a family and its secrets, including its battles with alcoholism, in a fictional, rural Wisconsin town. | Maggie Ginsberg/Twitter

“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.”

The book centers on Lib Hanson, a woman who abandoned her son as an infant only to see him show up on her doorsteps in a small Wisconsin town 40 years later. Originally, 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."

Indeed, earlier this year, the Wisconsin Policy Forum reported that 2020 experienced the largest year-to-year increase in alcohol-induced deaths in more than 20 years. In addition, 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 U.S. overall, with several cities across the state regularly rating as finalists in the “drunkest” in the U.S. rankings.

While a native of Wisconsin who professes to still have a love for the state as a third-generation Badger, Ginsberg 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 focused around alcohol.